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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Carol Reed's Masterpiece, Mason's Career Surge, Mar 17 2002
Belfast is a city of two faces. One city consists of bustling streets and energetic people with ready smiles. The other was that presented in this gripping film, that which the world media has focused on with increasing attention with the passage of time, the city of conflict where tensions accelerate to the boiling point and explode into violence."Odd Man Out" is a 1947 release which represents Carol Reed's first of three successively acclaimed international masterpieces. It was followed by "The Fallen Idol" with Ralph Richardson and Michelle Morgan and "The Third Man" with Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli and the moving appearance in the last thirty minutes by Orson Welles. James Mason was also greatly assisted career-wise in his sensitive role as a young Nationalist underground leader living the last day of his life in a state of excruciating pain. Mason had earlier come to prominence in the 1945 release "The Seventh Veil" with Ann Todd. This role completed his momentum swing into the top ranks of international cinema stardom. "Odd Man Out" and "The Third Man" have been selected as representative of British film noir at its finest. Reed uses shadows to compelling effect, while Robert Krasker, who would win an Oscar for Cinematography in "The Third Man," handled the camera with equally consummate skill in "Odd Man Out." The Reed-Krasker team present compelling silhouettes of characters who cross the path of Mason, whose face reveals the requisite painful sensitivity as underground gang leader Johnny McQueen. The film begins with the clock in the main square striking noon and ends at the ring of midnight. Mason, despite the urgings of his faithful girlfriend Kathleen Ryan and members of his gang, decides to participate in the holdup of a mill, from which the underground group hopes to obtain funds to live and continue pursuing political objectives. Ryan knows Mason's condition well. Since his escape from prison he has been confined to the same residence for six months, prompting her to intercede in an effort to let subordinates carry out the job without him, but Mason remains stubbornly in charge. The robbery is a directive from the very top of the organization and he intends to personally direct it, he emphatically tells a subordinate. On the ride to the mill a haziness is visible, a clever camera ploy indicating that Mason is subject to blurred vision and potential fainting spells. The robbery is staged in silence, after which, on the way out, Mason becomes groggy. While his subordinates wait in the car for him, Mason's delay costs him as a guard surfaces from the street. In the ensuing confrontation Mason kills his adversary, but is shot in the arm in turn by the dying guard. The group is able to pull Mason back into their car, but as it negotiates a rapid turn at a nearby corner he falls out. From that point, to the end of the film, Mason is reduced to wandering. He walks in rain and snow. His future is subject to potential barter by local dealmaker Cyril Cusack, who tries to obtain money from the poor parish priest, Father Tom, played by W.G. Fay, in exchange with providing information on Mason's whereabouts. At one point Mason is taken inside a residence and ministered to by two women. When the husband of one of the women comes home and learns that they have Mason, then wanted for murder, in their midst, he demands that he be put out into the street. When he sees the emaciated Mason with his sensitive expression, however, he weakens to the point of giving him a generous shot of whiskey before the dying man staggers back onto the street. One of the dramatic high points of the film is the stirring performance rendered by Robert Newton, who plays a crazed painter. When a badly weakened Mason arrives at the local pub the proprietor uses Newton to dispose of the underground political leader wanted for murder. He knows that if word gets around that he threw Mason back onto the street that he is in for trouble from Mason's loyal followers. Since the wild Newton had previously caused damage in the pub, the proprietor informs him that he will call the police if he will not get rid of the dying man. Newton takes him to his flat, where he delightfully begins painting him, longing to create an enduring work of a man in the final throes of death. Before the film ends the loving Ryan, who does not want to continue her existence on earth without Mason, figures out a way to end his misery and hers at the same time. When the police, with the omnipresent Cusack and the local priest trailing along, finally reach Mason, Ryan fires a shot, provoking the police to fire back. Ryan and Mason are both killed instantly. This is a film that presents struggle and conflict in a city plagued by religious strife through the prism of one man and his last painful day on earth as he interacts with those around him. These are the shadowy sketches of people reacting to conflict in their quest to endure. The novel by F.L. Green was brought to the screen with full force fidelity by the novelist and R.C. Sherriff. It is a film whose message has only broadened with the passage of time and the ongoing efforts to achieve peace in Northern Ireland. The suffering of Belfastians in their strife was vividly presented with laudable good taste, with the minimum of violence, and the maximum of stirring passion. It represents a jewel from one of the cinema's true geniuses, Carol Reed, operating at the top of his form.
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