Odd Man Out ***** (1946, James Mason, Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack) – Classic Movie Review 1807

Director Carol Reed’s moody, impeccably crafted 1946 British thriller showcases one of James Mason’s most renowned performances as Johnny McQueen, an IRA Irish nationalist leader gunman who commits a failed mill robbery in Belfast, kills and is badly injured. He is then hunted down by the police but attempts to evade them and receives support and succour from all manner of eccentric Irish folk.

Owing some debt to pre-Second World War French ‘poetic realist’ thrillers, Odd Man Out stands up as a gripping film noir crime drama. It won the 1948 BAFTA Film Award for Best British Film. It is superbly filmed with an eerie atmosphere of menace and impending doom, and filled with magnetic performances by a large, special cast. Mason’s distinguished performance is all the more remarkable as it is largely wordless, while young Irish player Kathleen Ryan is notable as Kathleen, the girlfriend Johnny hides out with.

Robert Newton, F J McCormick, Cyril Cusack, Robert Beatty, Fay Compton, Dan O’Herlihy, Denis O’Dea (as the Inspector), Maureen Delaney, Joseph Tomelty, William Hartnell, Eddie Byrne, Elwyn Brook-Jones, Dora Bryan, Guy Rolfe, W G Fay and Geoffrey Keen co-star.

With eye-catching noir cinematography by Robert Krasker, Odd Man Out is atmospherically and imaginatively directed by Reed in his prime, two years before his masterwork The Third Man, also lensed by Krasker (who won an Oscar).

F L Green and R C Sherriff’s excellent screenplay is based on Green’s novel.

Green’s novel was filmed again as The Lost Man in 1969 with Sidney Poitier, Joanna Shimkus and Al Freeman Jr and ’71 (2014) with Jack O’Connell is a very similar kind of movie.

In 1953 Reed became only the second British film director to be knighted for film-making. Michael Powell said that Reed ‘could put a film together like a watchmaker puts together a watch.’ Graham Greene said that Reed is ‘the only director I know with that particular warmth of human sympathy, the extraordinary feeling for the right face in the right part, the exactitude of cutting and the power of sympathising with an author’s worries and an ability to guide him.’

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1807

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