# Odd Man Out (1947)

### reviewed by
Dennis Schwartz

ODD MAN OUT (director: Carol Reed; screenwriters: F.L. Green/ Robert Cedric Sherriff/from book by Green; cinematographer: Robert Krasker; editor: Fergus McDonell; cast: James Mason (Johnny McQueen ), Robert Newton (Lukey), Robert Beatty (Dennis), Kathleen Ryan (Kathleen), Cyril Cusack (Pat), Dan O'Herlihy (Nolan), F.J. McCormick (Shell), Roy Irving (Murphy), W.G. Fay (Father Tom), Elwyn Brook-Jones (Tober), Maureen Delaney (Teresa), Kitty Kirwan (Granny), Denis O'Day (Head Constable); Runtime: 111; J. Arthur Rank; 1947-UK)

    Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Carol Reed's breakthrough film as a director after a long and undistinguished film career. He followed this success with two other classics in British cinema -- "The Fallen Idol" and, his greatest film, "The Third Man." The subject matter of the "Odd Man Out" is about a political fugitive on the run who has just robbed a mill in Belfast and murdered the cashier, which ironically happens after he comes to believe violence may not be the best solution for change...though he still believes fervently in supporting the IRA cause financially. James Mason plays Johnny McQueen, the chief of an Irish organization, though not mentioned by name, but obviously is the IRA. He has just committed the robbery after escaping from prison while serving a long sentence for gun-running. He was cooped up for the last 6 months in Kathleen's (Ryan) family house, where she lives with her colorful granny. She is madly in love with him and wants him to chose her instead of the organization.

    Warning: spoilers to follow.

The robbery is botched when Johnny blacks out and can't get into the getaway car in time. A cashier with a gun pointed at him tries to stop him, but gets fatally shot as they wrestle to the ground. Johnny is severly wounded in the shoulder and when the cowardly driver Pat (Cusack) refuses to stop and the others can't help him into the car letting him drop to the gutter, he therefore must go through an alley to escape the police and winds up lying in a delirious state in an air raid shelter.

His close comrade Dennis (Beatty) goes searching for him, hoping to get him out of the area, which the police have sealed off. Meanwhile two others in the robbery, Pat and Murphy (Irving), get drunk in the house of an informer (Delaney) and tell her everything, betraying their comrades. She turns them over to the inspector (O'Day), whose men shoots them as they try to escape from her house, and she also tells the inspector about Kathleen and Dennis, making a deal with him to look the other way at her black market schemes.

Wandering the streets in a delirious state and weakened by a loss of blood, Johnny is taken in by two helpful women pedestrians who patch him up and turn him loose when they discover who he is, not interested in the reward or in helping him escape, or in turning him over to the police...they are just trying to figure out what to do that is right. Placed in a cab by a reveler out in the drenching rain, the cabby drops him off at a junkyard where he is spotted by a caged bird fancier, Shell (McCormick). He figures he can sell him to Father Tom (Fay) and thereby make some cash to help him out in his destitute state. Kathleen has also gone to Father Tom for help and he tells her he will try to save Johnny's soul and get him to surrender if he is brought to him...that there is nothing else that he can do for him. But, her plans are to smuggle him out of the country by boat and go with him far away from the problems here, and try to start a new life.

One of Shell's acquaintances is a drunken, homosexual artist, Lukey (Newton), who is a struggling painter using Shell as a model for a saint. When he hears about Johnny from him, he insists that he bring Johnny to him, as he wants to look into the desperate eyes of a fugitive on the run and capture his idealistic soul on canvas. Shell's other pal he lives with is Tober (Brook-Jones), someone who could have been a doctor if he didn't screw up. He wants to mend Johnny so that he can prove his medical skills on the wounded man. He does not care that he would only be healing Johnny so that the fugitive could be executed. Both wish only to use Johnny to prove that they can function with skill in their fields, where they are currently viewed as failures. They have no human interest in him, which even Johnny in his dying state can see, as he stumbles away from them and in a religiously charged scene, he quotes from I Corinthians 8 -- which is the verse that says man is nothing without charity. That only help given without expecting something from it, is truly a Christian charity.

The perverted Shell tries to bring the still weakened Johnny to Father Tom and thereby to freedom -- his price for doing that good deed is a promise of approval from Father Tom and perhaps some money and acceptance for the doleful life he leads. But Johnny collapses before he reaches the church and when Kathleen spots him in the square she tries to steer him to the waterfront, but it is too late, as the police had her tailed. She commits suicide, taking Johnny with her, dying for what she believes is greater than faith or anything else in life, her love of Johnny. In fact, the only glimmer of hope that is offerred to the people of Northern Ireland, is that the doomed Johnny died in the arms of someone who was real and loved him, rather than at the hands of the police, or with the IRA, or with the priest, or someone who was selling him for dispensation. The hope is that the Republic will be a true one, based on the peace and love of all the people of Ireland, once it recognizes that it is the people themselves who have to unite as one and not be fooled by groups that are only giving them a false ideal.

Londoner Reed has shot a pro-British film, that is stronger on being a suspenseful art film than an accurately political one. The dark rainy streets of Belfast and the brooding mood of Mason, made this film look much like a noir feature. Mason seems like he is in the middle of a nightmare, traveling through an ugly urban landscape where there is no escape. It is preachy in spots, trying to show many different sides to the struggle, where characters along the way seem more like symbols than real flesh-and-blood. There are bar patrons spouting the cause while drenched in ale, rational British policemen acting with restraint, ordinary citizens not wanting to get involved in the violence or looking to turn the fugitive in for the reward money, and there are decent IRA family members all caught up in the turbulent times, each trying to figure a way out of the mess the country is in. But the film was very weak in setting up the political arguments that caused the civil war in the first place, as no rational person will disagree with the film's anti-violent stance. But there is a lot going on that the film left uncovered from the point of view of what the revolutionaries are protesting. I found the film, nevertheless, absorbing, especially as a thriller--a 'cops and robbers' tale.

    REVIEWED ON 12/22/2000     GRADE: B

Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"

    http://www.sover.net/~ozus

    ozus@sover.net

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