Odd Man Out (1947)

Directed and produced by Carol Reed

Irish nationalist Johnny McQueen (James Mason) leads a daring daylight robbery of a mill during the escape from which he shoots a mill employee and is himself grievously wounded. Abandoned by his panicky accomplices, he wanders desperately as night falls, seeking succor in a cold and opportunistic city.

Odd Man Out is no more about the sectarian, religious and political problems of Northern Ireland than Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a Scottish history lesson. The setting is a backcloth for a moving, involving and, in some ways, disturbing, tragedy of human relations. It is not even, really, a story about crime, nor even about criminals but, rather, about how people react to those in trouble, when how they react will greatly affect themselves.

Almost everyone McQueen meets helps or hinders him – or both helps and hinders – for their own reasons. In his delirious ramblings (physical and mental), McQueen quotes 1 Corinthians: “Though I have all faith…and have not charity, I am nothing.” Whether he knows it or not McQueen is searching for charity, and those around him have nothing. But I think the movie is about something just as fundamental, but more complicated: guilt and innocence.

There are three honest characters in Odd Man Out. One is the police inspector (Dennis O’Dea) hunting McQueen. He tells kindly Father Tom (W G Fay) that he is not interested in good or evil, but in guilt or innocence. One gathers that people are all the same to him, save for that division. He tells Kathleen (Kathleen Ryan), the young woman in love with McQueen, to ‘stay out of this business’, the disgust in his voice for the sorry, sordid mess evident. Father Tom too declares that he is interested in guilt or innocence. Respected and admired by all, he wants to find McQueen to save, not his life, but his soul, something infinitely more important than mere mortality.

The other honest man is, ironically, the thief and murderer Johnny McQueen. Having spent eight months in prison before escaping, he states that ‘prison changes a man’; his lieutenant Dennis (Robert Beatty) sees that McQueen’s heart isn’t in the job and, indeed, during the length of his odyssey, McQueen’s principal preoccupation is whether or not the man he shot has died.

All the other characters react to McQueen with varying degrees of sympathy, dislike, fear or greed. Those who left him in the lurch (played by Cyril Cusack, Dan O’Herlihy and Roy Irving) are more concerned with not being blamed. Dennis sees the fugitive’s value only in terms of ‘the organisation’. A neighbourhood panhandler (F J McCormack) is looking for a reward. The half-mad artist Lukey (Robert Newton) wants to paint the face of a dying man. Publican Fencie (William Hartnell) just desires McQueen gone from his premises. There is further irony in that Kathleen comes across as selfish as the others; she wants to save McQueen, but for herself, not for himself.

The script weaves all these characters into story of which McQueen is the centre but, unusually, not, after the first half-hour, the focus. He becomes a catalyst, a symbol, rather than a human being, reflecting how others view him. Yet he remains a human to himself, as his cry of anguish, pain and despair in the pub makes clear.

In this context, Mason’s performance is superb. At first a diffident criminal, he must convey for the remainder of the movie an anonymity yet a real individuality. As he stumbles through the darkening town, soaked by rain, soiled by mud, he becomes almost a soul trapped in a robotic body, wanted to reach out for help, to beg, but ends up being given from one uncaring pair of hands to another.

The rest of the cast equals Mason’s performance. He propels Odd Man Out but the film is carried by the small-part players. It is really an ensemble piece with a major star at its head.

The actors, the writing (by R C Sherriff and F L Green, from the latter’s novel) and production are laid out by director Reed in fine fashion, a bright, crisp day turning into a bleak, Dickensian night. It would not have done to have been shot in colour, for the black-and-white photography (by Robert Krasker) creates a world of shadows and silhouettes, essential to hinting at motives and intentions.

As for the more prosaic aspects of Odd Man Out, it is interesting that it treats a gunshot wound as the serious injury it can be. Wounded in the shoulder, McQueen experiences agony and blood-loss, his body shocked into near-paralysis; there is none of the common film noir application of a bandage and simple sling to cure such damage.

Though set undoubtedly in Belfast, the city is never named. Nor is the Irish Republican Army, though ‘the organisation’ of which McQueen is the local chief is clearly that group. Politics are eschewed; the IRA wants to obtain funds, so they rob a mill; the police track down the criminals. It’s that simple. Again, like Macbeth, Odd Man Out could have been set anywhere, and at any time. (Note the diversity of accents among the characters; some have or manage Irish accents, but some are distinct from others; certainly not all are from Ulster.)

An extraordinary movie from every aspect, Odd Man Out is a superb study of greed, opportunism, guilt, charity and all the types of humanity those qualities create.