Odd Man Out (1947)

 Carol Reed's "Odd Man Out"

Perhaps what is most captivating about Carol Reed's 1947 British film "Odd Man Out" is that it is difficult to point out exactly what kind of film it actually is and what it is even about. Obviously, the film's plot can be summed up rather succinctly and appears very simple. When I question what the film is about, I'm not speaking about the film's plot or the actual literal events of the story. 

The film centers on an Irish nationalist named Johnny McQueen who gets shot in the shoulder when a robbery goes awry. The rest of the film is spent with him traipsing on throughout the night attempting to evade an active police hunt. As he evades arrest, the wanders through the labyrinth of Belfast, encountering various citizens whom all deal with him in various ways. 

What's interesting about this scenario is that Johnny, an IRA member, starts the film a conscious protagonist and slowly begins to become peripheral to these secondary characters. Rather than continuing to focus on Johnny, we slowly become far more interested in the side characters are their relationship to their moral choices of how to deal with him. I've been doing some reading on the film and it seems a lot of people seem to believe that, because Johnny is in the process of dying and morphs into an unconscious zombified person, he starts to become the symbol of death itself. As we watch the characters interact and deal with Johnny, we see how they interact with the concept of death. Most characters don't really want to deal with him, as they move him out of their restaurants, out of their homes, and place him in alleys to leave him be. That being said, most of the characters don't really want to turn him in either. It's just that they don't want to 'get mixed up' in all the criminality. But, towards the end of the film, characters begin to want Johnny for various, and often superficial or selfish, reasons. The lowly street urchin wants to sell him for a reward, the painter Lukey wants to paint him, and the local priest Father Tom wants to 'save' him. They all want to use Johnny for their own personal benefit or DON'T want Johnny for their own personal benefit. 

Because each person interacts with Johnny differently, it paints the wider tableau of the community as being inherently self-interested. Sure, there are many that don't want Johnny to get caught, but none of the characters seem actively interested in helping Johnny due to his status as a wanted criminal. Perhaps I am reaching, but while watching the film, I seemed to view Johnny as representative of a dying 'nationalism' or a dying sense of 'communal spirit.' I know, I know, he is a member of a gang, a criminal, etc. But because he is a 'nationalist' who seems to do the things he does for the sake of Irish nationalism and a 'communal' greater good theoretically, it seems like his dying seems emblematic of the dying sense of organized political efforts. Again, perhaps I am stretching for this (I almost certainly am), but after World War II and the horrors committed by the Nazis, nationalism and organized political movements seemed far too controversial for the average citizen. Through the disengagement with assisting Johnny and the preference for self-gratifying interactions, it seems as though nationalism and community-driven organizations seemed to make way for the staunch individualism that pervaded the later half of the 20th century. Johnny's dazed observations of the people he interacts with allows him to observe the sense of safety and security that harbors preference for the common person. The common person would choose to stay out of the way for their own self protection, or their own self-gratification through interacting with this dying sense of rebellion and instead opting for the safety that comes from socially disinterested self satisfaction. Again, perhaps this was a bit of a stretch, but I was viewing the film through this lens while watching.

All of that being said, "Odd Man Out" is a very entertaining noir-esque thriller that allows Carol Reed to come alive in his direction. This direction obviously influenced how he would level up once again for this direction on "The Third Man" a couple of years later, but "Odd Man Out" still presents a unique and interesting visuality. The first part of the film in which Johnny is at his most conscious is filmed in the same realist style that much of Europe had fully embraced in the post-war era. However, the more Johnny grows unconscious, especially darker it becomes in the night, the most Reed turns the film into a Fritz Lang expressionist piece. There are even scenes where we inhabit Johnny's dazed and dizzying perspective as the camera illustrates figures and images that are not there and even shakes frantically at this spell of dizziness. It is a film that becomes all the more intoxicated and psychological as the it progresses.

Overall, I enjoyed "Odd Man Out." The film begins as a simple police-evading thriller and turns slowly into a more psychological and even philosophical piece about community, our interaction with death, our social responsibilities, and even our moral testament in the post-war landscape.