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.

Box of Moonlight (1996)

Directed by Tom DiCillo; produced by Thomas A Bliss and Marcus Viscidi

Al Fountain (John Turturro) is an electrical engineer bordering on middle-age. He is married, contentedly if not happily, and has a son who is starting to disappoint him. On a whim, he pretends that his latest job, far from home, has been extended, and travels to find a lake where he spent pleasant holidays with his family. On the way, he meets the Kid (Sam Rockwell), an eccentric petty larcenist, who lives in half a trailer (literally half: he owns the right half) and makes a precarious but satisfying living selling stolen lawn ornaments. With the Kid’s help, Al, though unable to recapture the joy of his youth, recaptures joy, in some form or another.

To judge by its title and its plot, Box of Moonlight appears to be trying to be a charming tale of a man with little direction in his life finding himself. Though it is not a bad effort, the film falls short of whatever its goal may have been.

The major problem is the script. The story itself is good enough to sustain a movie, but it is lost in the details. The catalyst for Al’s adventure seems to be his discovery of his first grey hair. After that, he experiences several times the illusion of time moving backward. The obviousness of the metaphor is plain – though it takes a long time for Al to realise it, even considering his search for the lost lake of his childhood – yet it really has nothing to do with his friendship with the Kid. That is, in truth, a separate movie, and the worries Al may have, subconsciously, over aging are irrelevant.

Al’s character hurts the film. He comes across as largely unlikeable. That’s not to claim that he is a bad person, or even that he cannot be liked. There is just little about him that appeals. He is not very bright, he treats his wife perfunctorily, and isn’t that involved with his son. These elements are marginally remedied at the end, but not by much.

As well, there are parts of the script that are actually unpleasant; the inclusion of a clergyman who turns out to be an axe-murderer is pointless, unless to show hypocrisy. (There is, in fact, an anti-Christian aspect to the movie that serves no purpose except, perhaps, to gratify something personal in the writer (who is also the director). They have no bearing on the plot or the characters.) Al’s rejection of the rigid boundaries of his life are manifested in vandalism of his work-place, which is unimaginative and rather childish.

The one reward in watching Box of Moonlight is the performance of Sam Rockwell. He makes the quirkiness of the Kid, at times rather self-conscious, credible, and ably manages at one point to show the Kid’s secret insecurity and loneliness. This was Rockwell’s first big rôle, I think, though the film itself was not seen much, and showed what he was capable of. His versatility has become well-known.

Over all, Box of Moonlight gives me the impression of having been made for those who are fans of DiCillo, and for the deliberate exclusion of those who ‘don’t get’ the writer/director’s work.

Stray Dog (1949)

Directed by Akira Kurosawa; produced by Sôjirô Motoki

In the middle of a smothering summer heat wave, novice homicide detective Murakami (Toshirô Mifune) loses his service pistol. Convinced that his pocket was picked while on a bus home, he is referred to veteran investigator Sato (Takashi Shimura). As the two follow possibly inconsequential leads, they find themselves involved in a series of deadly robberies committed by the thief, whose mental health, they discover, verges on insanity.

An excellent crime-story, Stray Dog benefits from an array of features. Even though it was directed by one of the best – certainly the most famous - of Japan’s cinema-directors, Kurosawa’s work here is early in his career, and seems less subtle than it could have been. Nonetheless, it is spot-on for this straightforward tale of crimes, crooks and cops.

Furthermore, the direction takes into account the time and place, showing Tokyo as it was just four years after the end of the Second World War. Much of the city is wrecked, and there is a prolonged sequence (a little too prolonged perhaps) which depicts various aspects of the city’s slums, and the people who inhabit them, many there, maybe, due to war damage. As well, the swelter of the torrid summer is effectively portrayed, and when a heavy rain falls, the viewer can feel that even the drops are warm.

The story is, as mentioned, straightforward, but certainly not without interest, especially for someone from North America and eighty years after the movie’s production. The script, by Kurosawa and Ryûzô Kikushima, is without artifice when demonstrating crime in Japan’s capital in 1949. One wonders if such openness would have been allowed just half a decade previously. A thriving black market in firearms, sold and even rented by way of ration-cards, develops the plot, while the effects of the war are treated without bias or comment. The robber, Yusa (Isao Kimura), is described as ‘not having been the same since the war’, and one suspect is afraid of the police. Sato calms him by implying the army was brutal and that ‘we [the police] don’t do that sort of thing’.

A wide range of income-levels and residential status is shown, giving an excellent, if superficial, view of Japan in that era. Yusa lives in a hovel built behind his married sister’s house; one of his victims lives in a pleasant middle-class home with a garden, while Sato and his family happily inhabit a small cottage just outside the city.

Other aspects of Japan are related with fascinating nonchalance: a baseball game, attended by thousands despite the heat (note the team names on players’ shirt, printed in English, and the umpire’s exhortation to ‘play ball’, also in English.) The changes the country is going through are evinced by a female pickpocket astounding a knowledgeable detective by wearing a dress, whereas she had not been seen out of a kimono for decades. And note the harmonica player performing ‘Waves of the Danube’ (also known as ‘The Anniversary Song’.)

But the most obvious advantage Stray Dog has is the acting. Mifune, soon to become Japan’s first cinematic super-star, clearly has talent here, though he is almost overshadowed by Shimura, as his temporary partner. Also to be noted is Keiko Awaji as a show-girl. Like all good directors, Kurosawa pays attention to the small rôles and the bit-players.

Stray Dog takes a little time to find its pace. Once it does, however, it keeps the viewer interested as its policemen travel the underbelly, dusty streets, bars and night-clubs of late 1940s Tokyo, heading toward a satisfying climax. It is a film well worth seeing.

The Suspect (1944)

Directed by Robert Siodmak; produced by Islin Auster

Philip Marshall (Charles Laughton) is the kind and decent manager of a tobacco shop in 1902 London. He is liked and respected, but his marriage to self-pitying, selfish, unfeeling Cora (Rosalind Ivan) is dead. He is content to continue it, though, for the sake of his grown son and for appearances. When he begins an innocent friendship with young Mary Gray (Ella Raines), he is revitalized. This happiness - and Mary herself – is threatened when Cora discovers the platonic relationship.

An interesting and rather genteel film noir, The Suspect is carried by Laughton, but not quite high enough to lift it above its faults. Laughton could easily play sympathetic – as he does here – or malicious, and though it is clearly implied that he is a murderer, even if it is not as clearly shown, the audience will be on his side in this movie. He portrays Marshall as a good man who tries to make work a bad marriage with a horrible person, and whose homicidal intentions even come across as altruistic.

Also of note is Ivan as Cora. Her behaviour, especially her delight in ruining lives, puts her personality beyond shrewish, and one can’t but think that all those who knew her felt relief at her demise. It is a persuasive performance on Ivan’s part, as is Henry Daniell’s as a conniving neighbour.

The problems with The Suspect come from other than its cast, and partly arise from the movie’s own gentility. It is set at the beginning of the twentieth century but, except for a horror of divorce evinced by Cora – a horror which would have been felt by many even in the 1940s – there is no necessity for the time period. (Evidently the movie’s publicity department felt likewise: Raines is depicted on the poster in contemporary attire.)

Indeed, The Suspect is not entirely convincing in placing the story in 1902. Though prosperous and, at this stage of their lives, middle-class, the Marshalls have no servants. This in an era when domestic service produced employment for a huge section of the poorer classes; even well-off working class households often boasted a servant. The behaviour of the characters doesn’t reflect the Edwardian era any more than it does later times, despite references to ‘revealing’ bathing suits and the refusal of the tobacconists to sell cigarettes to ladies.

The crimes are ironically treated. The weakness in more than a few films noir is that a police investigation looks superficial to viewers from later periods and, sometimes, comes across as amateurish even in its contemporary context. Bullets are not compared to the firearms that fired them, injuries are dismissed as accidental when they patently may be homicidal, etc. Here, the problem is the reverse. The intelligent Inspector Huxley (Stanley C Ridges) investigates Cora’s death seemingly on a hunch. A fall down a flight of stairs known to be damaged is questioned, as is the demise of an habitual drunk, whose body is found in a canal. If there is one death that might have been glossed over as accidental, it is that; yet the implication is that an autopsy was performed. The fact is that Marshall seems cornered more by the writers than by the evidence.

Beyond the story, there is a problem with the direction. Siodmak, a masterful director who helped create one of the most famous films noir in The Killers, and helmed other high-quality movies such as The Phantom Lady, The Spiral Staircase and Cry of the City, seemingly can’t do much with The Suspect. There is little suspense, despite the title, though there are good moments, such as when a hidden body may be uncovered. But it’s as if the film’s direction followed the mood of the quiet, suburban setting, and found it rather comforting.

Despite first-rate work by Laughton and others, The Suspect is a very minor entry from all concerned.

 

Rififi (1955)

Directed by Jules Dassin; produced by René Bezard, Henri Bérard, Pierre Cabaud

Tony le Stéphanois (Jean Servais) has just been released from prison, after a five-year term for jewel thievery. He’s reluctant to start any fresh caper, even with his good and trusted allies Jo le Suédois (Carl Möhner) and Mario Ferrati (Robert Manuel). But after a confrontation with his former girlfriend, Mado (Marie Sabouret), who took up with another man the week after Tony’s sentencing, he counts himself in. But the simple smash-and-grab Jo and Mario envisioned isn’t enough: instead of a few gems from a shop-front window, the three associates determine to rob the safe inside. But though they may get away with the jewels, their troubles will only be starting.

Even as a drama, Rififi is an excellent film, with well-defined characters, well-written dialogue, excellent performances and direction that brings it all together. The men and women who populate the movie are realistic, their actions and reactions are realistic. The underworld depicted is not a deep study of the power-politics behind organised crime, but a slice of the lives of a small group of crooks, men and women who live by theft, assault and blackmail. Nonetheless, the four main characters come across as sympathetic, largely due to their loyalty to one another.

Servais is the lynchpin of the cast, as he makes Tony a tired, middle-aged hood, seemingly ready to get out of the life in which he’s always lived, but unable to resist a good caper. This type of character may be common in crime-films, but when it’s done well, it’s always fresh. Jo and Mario are happier men, each with his family life (Jo’s young child is Tony’s godson), and there is interest in seeing criminals (whose activities are, after all, largely part-time work) enjoying the bosom and joys of home. A contrast to this is Tony, whose prison stretch excludes him from such bliss. In each case, the actor creates a convincing portrait.

The dialogue doesn’t delve into the personalities of the characters much; these come out in their actions. Spoken words stick very closely to carrying the plot, except at the beginning, as when we learn that Tony’s five years in jail spared Jo any prison-time. Aside from such introductions, we must glean what we can from what we see done.

The direction by Dassin, who also excellently plays (under the pseudonym Perlo Vita) Cesar the safe-breaker, is top-notch. One would expect no less from the director of Brute Force, Night and the City and The Naked City. Special attention must have been given to the extras involved; their faces and attitudes go a great way to creating atmosphere.

And on the subject of atmosphere, Dassin’s use of locations is well-conceived, showing a slight distortion of the Paris that many might expect: there is the unmistakable architecture, the broad boulevards, the cafés – but mostly in a type of gloom that isn’t just the result of black-and-white photography. It’s no coincidence that many of the scenes are wet with rain, dark with night or dim with clouds. Despite Jo’s glad home-life and Mario’s hilarity, the world these people inhabit is more in keeping with Tony’s frowning and slightly tubercular grimness.

The centre-piece of Rififi is the heist itself. Like many aspects of the movie, it is treated radically different than the novel that inspired the film. The scene runs more than half an hour and is without music or words. Yet it neither drags nor loses interest: half the time the viewer is wondering why the crooks are doing something – we are not privy to their detailed plan, after all – but moments later, we are enlightened. The scene is as instructional as it is entertaining.

Though the heist is what most talk about when discussing Rififi, there is an equally exciting scene at the end, when Tony races to return his godson to his home. What is astonishing about this sequence – also almost without dialogue – is that there is no question how it will end, yet it remains tense until its final seconds.

Rififi is a drama and a caper-film, film noir and character study, fashioned by a master movie-maker and presented by a first-rate cast and crew.

Murder in Reverse? (1945)

Directed by Montgomery Tully; produced by Louis H Jackson

Tom Masterick (William Hartnell) is a contented man, working on the London docks as a stevedore, and living with his wife, Doris (Chili Bouchier), and daughter, Jill. Masterick’s world falls apart when he learns that Doris is having an affair. He attacks the other man, Fred Smith (John Slater), whom Masterick is convinced survives, though the rest of the world believes is killed. Masterick is tried for murder and sentenced to life in prison. Fifteen years later, he is paroled, and determined to prove his innocence.

A well-used plot is the device by which this movie examines the conundrum of a man convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, who can then prove his case. It has been done numerous times and, unfortunately for Murder in Reverse?, usually better, most notably in The Long Memory (1953), reviewed on this blog in February of 2021.

The problem in Murder in Reverse? isn’t the acting, which includes a solid performance from Hartnell (listed as ‘William’ in the opening credits, and ‘Billy’ at the end), most famous in movies for playing British Army sergeants and the like, and in television as the first Dr Who. He does a good job here, convincingly portraying a man in the vigour of healthy middle age as well as a decrepit individual hobbled by years of prison. His interpretation of Masterick is especially good in creating someone who seems reasonable, and only to be asking for justice, but whose obsession foreshadows tragedy.

Providing support is Brefni O’Rourke (credited as Brefni O’Rorke) as a sympathetic newspaper editor and Jimmy Hanley as his carefree reporter; these two have a good rapport and would have made an amusing team in a movie series. Complimenting them is Dinah Sheridan (then married to Hanley) as the editor’s daughter and the reporter’s love-interest. Also of note is Bouchier, whose performance as the pitiful Mrs Masterick fifteen years on is excellent. A young Petula Clark portrays little Jill Masterick.

A major problem, however, is the script, adapted by the director from a novel. There is a credibility gap in the survival of Fred Smith (which is never really in doubt.) When it is learned that Smith lived through the attempt on his life, and is, fifteen years afterward, managing a pub in Gravesend, there is raised the question of why Smith did not come forward to exonerate Masterick. Given that they were enemies, the answer is straightforward. But there is no urgency or indignation displayed by the other characters over the fact that Smith allowed Masterick to suffer. He is simply asked to present himself to the authorities - with little indication that he himself may face jail-time for his silence.

Further, Smith is still living under his own name. In fifteen years, no one considered Smith and said, “Say, aren’t you the bloke who was supposed to have been murdered?…” In a decade and a half, not one person who knew Smith or Masterick or both either learned where Smith was or told the police about it. To own and run a public house requires licenses, regular visits by police, etc., yet no one thought to connect Smith to Masterick. This is especially unbelievable when we know that the Masterick trial was famous, even a cause célèbre, and that his release fifteen years later was well-known. One would have thought that Doris, embittered by being eventually rejected by Smith, would have been the sort to exact revenge on him by contacting the authorities.

It may be a small thing to damage a movie, but since the movie depends on that angle, it looms large. If the story simply had Smith alter his name, credibility would have been restored. As it is, it forces Murder in Reverse? into the category of a film in which one asks, “Well, why didn’t they just…?” And when audience members are much smarter than characters, there is a problem. In addition, when the lawyer who prosecuted Masterick learns that he was innocent and his own efforts ruined a man’s life, there is not even any concern shown by the lawyer for his own career, never mind Masterick’s fate; it becomes for the barrister an academic exercise. Though I understand what the writers were attempting, it comes across as quite unrealistic.

So while Murder in Reverse? benefits from its actors, it suffers from its writers, and fatally so.

Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954)

Directed by Don Siegel; produced by Walter Wanger

The convicts in cell block 11 are the worst in the prison, and the most desperate. In a bid not to escape but to improve conditions, they seize control of the block, inspiring other prisoners to go on the offensive. Guards are captured as hostages, and demands are made. But even within the tense stand-off that follows, each side fights to avoid making matters worse, as the warden (Emile Meyer) defies the prison commissioner (Frank Faylen) and the prisoners’ leader (Neville Brand) tries to suppress more violent rivals.

With its title, and coming from Allied Artists, formerly known as Monogram Pictures, a leading inhabitant of Hollywood’s ‘Poverty Row’, Riot in Cell Block 11 might be expected to be a straightforward exploitation/action flick. But it’s surprisingly, and commendably, more than that.

Firstly, the film has a semi-documentary feel to it. This is helped by a prologue that describes a spate of riots and take-overs of American prisons in the early 1950s. As it turns out, these were real, as were the resultant hearings and the short excerpt of an interview with Richard McGee, the then director of California’s Corrections Department. This prologue leads straight into the plot.

Secondly, though the producers may have wanted bigger names, the lesser known actors contribute to the realism - since there are clearly no Hollywood types here - while their talent is good enough not to diminish the drama. The best known actor is probably Neville Brand, whose resume included many criminal depictions; thus, he fit the type of the hardened, violent convict. While Brand may have been more famous as a heavy, Leo Gordon, playing ‘Crazy’ Mike Carnie was the real thing: a former felon and prison inmate. Meyer looks like a loading dock foreman, yet portrays a soft-spoken but tough warden, and character actors William Schallert and Whit Bissell portray, respectively, a reporter and a very unpopular prison guard.

Thirdly, the setting is realistic. It should be: it was Folsom Prison, made famous by the Johnny Cash song (written the year before the film and released the year after). The institution had been the subject of an earlier movie (Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison (1951)), though in Riot in Cell Block 11, it is not named (though mentioned prominently in the credits.) The operations of a then-modern prison are shown incidentally but in detail.

One of the most striking features of the movie is that it is a social commentary, as well as a suspenseful drama. A note of sympathy with the prisoners, and frustration and even anger with the lack of prison-reform, is struck at the start, and carries through the story. The warden has been trying to change the system for years, and has to cope with manpower shortages and lack of funds. The prisoners are driven not by a desire to escape but to improve their conditions. This viewpoint does not let the prisoners off lightly. They are seen as violent, vengeful, antagonistic; yet even Brand’s character, labelled a psychopath, does his best to keep a lid on the boiling pot, despite his bitterness and harsh nature. His performance makes the ending particularly strong.

A well-written, realistic drama, which gets its purpose across without sacrificing tension or action, Riot in Cell Block 11 is one of cinema’s better prison movies.