Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 8-November-09
Spoiler Rating: High

Odd Man Out (1947)

Few directors have captured the mystique of cities at night as well as Carol Reed. These days lots of movies have money shots of skyscrapers against a dark sky, but the appeal of such views is what they gild, the myriad lives and adventures taking place beneath the glitter. Reed found the stark beauty of cities on the ground. His masterpiece The Third Man depicts nocturnal Vienna as a bombed-out wonderland where decency survives and evil flourishes. Odd Man Out depicts nocturnal Belfast (or stand-ins for Belfast) as a labyrinth where the breadth of human nature is writ large.

Even during the day Reed's cities are siren songs of architecture where anything may happen. And in Belfast in the 1940s, guerrilla revolution was happening. The movie proclaims that it is about the people caught up in Ireland's "troubles" more than the troubles themselves. At the center of the storm is Johnny McQueen, an IRA chieftain and prison escapee who has been hiding in an attic while coordinating his clan's next raid. James Mason plays Johnny, looking very handsome and grappling with an intermittent brogue. He does not need to talk much after the first few minutes, for Johnny is wounded and stranded after their raid ends in a shoot-out. He stumbles around the city encountering friends, foes, and strangers as darkness falls and his life force drains away.

Crises show people's true colors. His bravest friends try to find him and get him to safety; his weaker ones take refuge in drunken tale-telling which attracts the attention of the police. The price on Johnny's head is incentive for opportunists to get involved. Some folks, like the cabbie who unwittingly gives him a ride, sympathize with him but are afraid to abet a fugitive. Others yearn to help him because he is dying, their compassion overriding their fear. The priest (W. G. Fay) wants to give him absolution. The policeman leading the manhunt (Denis O'Dea) wants justice done and no one else to get hurt.

The odyssey takes a peculiar turn when Johnny falls into the hands of a man (F. J. McCormick) who hopes to ransom him to his friends and a crazed painter (Robert Newton) who is thrilled to have a model with the light of death in his eyes. (At this point I have to wonder if Martin Scorsese paid homage to this film in After Hours.) While these misfits offer their dubious assistance, and indeed throughout all of Johnny's ordeal, the woman who loves him (Kathleen Ryan) struggles to accomplish his escape. Their reunion results in a powerful finale distinguished by Reed's brilliant use of music. It suggests that among the human qualities which Johnny's wandering has evoked — greed, pity, fear, faith, desperation, devotion to duty or ideals — love is the strongest and most frightening of all.

Copyright © 2009 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.