Odd Man Out (1947)

Odd Man Out (Carol Reed, 1947)

 "This story is told against a background of political unrest in a city of Northern Ireland. It is not concerned with the struggle between the law and an illegal organisation, but only with the conflict in the hearts of the people when they become unexpectedly involved."

 

Another film. Another fugitive. Another caveat.

 

Johnny McQueen (James Mason) is an operative of the IRA (although it has a reputation of "The Group That Must Not Be Named" in the film, referred to only as "The Organization"), newly escaped from prison and gone to ground in the flat of Kathleen Sullivan (Kathleen Ryan) and her gran'. To secure funds for their activities, Johnny has been commissioned to rob a mill payroll, and his crew are an odd lot of motley co-conspirators—Nolan (Daniel O'Herlihy, only his second film), Murphy (Roy Irving) and Pat (Cyril Cusack). Given his fugitive status, Johnny is the most at risk, but deems it necessary to lead the plan he has set up.

After the raid goes fairly successfully, the money stolen, the escape goes awry when Johnny is shot in the shoulder and, in the ensuing struggle, he shoots and kills the guard. Panicking, Pat starts to drive the getaway vehicle away, giving the wounded Johnny a last-second chance to dive through an open window and hang on while the gang speeds away. But, he can't hold on and falls and rolls into the street, leaving the others to argue about what to do. When Johnny hears sirens, he makes the decision for them, running off down an alley to take his chances, while the rest of the gang drive off.

Johnny stumbles into an abandoned air-raid shelter and passes out. He is alone, on the run, shot, bleeding out. Then, things get weird. A wayward ball from street-play bounces its way into the shelter and a little girl follows to retrieve it. But, Johnny doesn't see a little girl—he sees a copper staring mutely and the shelter his former jail-cell. He has been suffering from vertigo since his prison stay, but now, it becomes acute turning into hallucinations and fever-dreams, which he can't be sure of. Johnny's world is now an interior one and, in his predicament, he can't trust the reality of the outside-world.

He shouldn't trust it, anyway. The police are at the top of their game—a guard has been killed and the man who killed him is armed and on the run. Meanwhile, the men on the raid with him are looking out for themselves. They're either looking for Johnny or simply don't care. They're trying to save their own skins with the police on high alert. But, so are the towns-people, two of the gang get shot down in the streets after a tip-off. Johnny is found by another and deflects the attention of the coppers and allows Johnny to escape his trap.

But, anywhere he goes his shelter is only temporary...or downright dangerous. The city is one of conflicts—revolutionaries against police, faith versus politics, the samaritans versus the opportunists—and Johnny is caught up between all of them, even as he is stumbling, careening between life and death. Two women bring them into his home only to cast him out when the man of the house objects. A cab-driver finds him hiding in his hack and heaves him back into the cold. At a pub, he is hidden, but passed off to an obsessed painter (Robert Newton). Another just wants the reward. Kathleen (Kathleen Ryan), in love with Johnny, tries to find him and the local priest (W.G. Fay) just wants to save his soul.

Johnny's situation becomes more desperate and as he weakens, we see the film become more and more surrealistic, the straight lines of the night-time city streets giving way to melting interiors and perspectives that we can't trust, reflecting Johnny's failing faculties and his own sense of desperation.

Odd Man Out is disquieting and beautiful simultaneously. With a stand-out performance by James Mason—it's the film that made him a star—and a script that, for the most part, is stark and unsentimental, it would fit neatly in the noir niche, while careering into an inevitable fatalism that draws you in, slowly and inexorably, until its last dark moments of mercy, which don't feel like mercy at all, but a last resort. Reed's direction has a great deal to do with that, as he turns any space—even the city-streets—into a claustrophobic nightmare ready to suffocate at any time. Credit Robert Krasker for the cinematography making spectacle of alley-ways drenched in long shadows blasted by a single source of light and the cobblestone streets back-lit by luminous puddles that you could imagine their tread underfoot.

Odd Man Out was the first film to receive a BAFTA as "Best Film." And it is the favorite film of Gore Vidal, as well as Roman Polanski—probably as it reminded him of his experiences hiding out from the Nazi's in the Krakow ghetto during WWII, which would inform his film The Pianist.

 

Don't Make a Scene (Redux): The Third Man

It takes a lot of time to do the "Don't Make a Scene" feature that I put up every Sunday (all those screen-caps!), so while I'm preparing a bunch more, I'm going to take a break and re-post the ones that have gotten the most "hits," and others that I think are exceptional—it is no surprise to me that they couldn't be more different. This is one of my favorites, and I recall it a lot these days when I see prominent public servants turning tail, flip-flopping, waffling, and just generally being hypocrites and outright bastards. The polite term for it is "Situational Ethics." I have lots of impolite words for it.

The Story:  Vienna is a divided city and the only things passing through its borders unstopped are the crime and corruption that know no bounds, and its sewers below which serve as an escape route, and a metaphor. In this classic scene Holly Martins confronts his past, and wrestles with a moral dilemma. It's often called "The cuckoo clock scene" for Orson Welles' famous ad-libbed retort of Holly's moral outrage, ignoring the rest of the conversation, as Martins confronts his sociopathic friend on the pre-text of taking the moral high ground, when all he wants is to save the woman he loves. Of course, the argument comes around. Of course, it's staged on a ferris wheel. Damned clever, these writers...

I've been on the Wiener Reisenrad, the 212 ft. ferris wheel that figures in this scene (although, obviously for convenience, this was filmed in a studio with rear projection).  I was at a wedding in Vienna and it seemed sacrilegious to be "in town," love movies, and not do a pilgrimage to the place where this scene (and ones from Letter from an Unknown Woman, The Living Daylights and Before Sunrise, no doubt in tribute) at the Prader amusement park was filmed. 

As it was built in 1897, the rest of the party was a bit reluctant to join me, but I took a short walk to the grounds and bought a ticket.  Old, wooden, and a bit decrepit, what you don't see is the way it shakes as it circles about, causing each car to sway a bit uncomfortably, and the timbers groan and creak as it circles pulling your gondola to the highest point to present a vast panorama of Vienna, a view so breath-taking that you forget the trepidation with which you got there.  That seems more than appropriate for this to be the setting of this scene.

The Set-Up: Pulp novelist Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) has been invited by his old crony Harry Lime* (Orson Welles) to visit him in war-torn (literally, into three military zones) Vienna, Austria. When he gets there, Harry is dead, with suggestions that he was a piratical black marketer selling watered down penicillin to hospitals. Holly, wanting to clear Lime's good name, starts to dig for answers but the more he uncovers, the worse the impression he gets of his old friend. One night, he is sure he sees Harry in a doorway--Harry is alive--and he makes it known to the Underworld that he demands to see Lime or he'll go to the police and expose the whole shipping syndicate. The meeting place--the Prater Wheel. Holly Martins wanders off to see a ghost of the man he once knew, in the most private and precarious of places. 

Action!

DISSOLVE TO:

MARTINS seated on parapet of "Chairoplane" at deserted fair ground, the big wheel behind him. He gets up and starts to walk round the "Chairoplane" stand.

LONG SHOT - MERRY-GO-ROUND It is still and nobody near it.

LONG SHOT - MARTINS standing CR of the "Chairoplane" stand, the big wheel behind him in b.g. He walks forward into MED. CLOSE SHOT, looking off.

LONG SHOT - MERRY-GO-ROUND and deserted fair ground, with Harry Lime seen in far b.g. walking downstage - from Martins' eye line.

MED. CLOSE SHOT - MARTINS looking off.

MED. LONG SHOT - HARRY moving downstage, looking off, smiling for Martins - he exits. Music stops.

HARRY walks downstage to Martins. He walks round him and stops, facing Martins.
HARRY: Hello, old man. How are you?
MARTINS: Hello, Harry.
HARRY: Well, well, they seem to've been giving you quite some busy time.
MARTINS: Listen...
HARRY: Yes.
MARTINS: I want to talk to you.
HARRY: Talk to me?...Of course...Come on...

HARRY taking off his coat, followed by Martins. The girl attendant of the wheel enters b.g.

HARRY: Kids used to ride this thing a lot in the old days. They haven't got the money nowadays, poor little devils.

Harry gets the tickets from her.

GIRL: Zwei steck.
HARRY: Geht in ordung.

They enter the carriage of the wheel.

GIRL: Vielen danke.

Girl attendant closes the door and starts the wheel in motion.

MARTINS: Listen, Harry - I didn't believe that...
HARRY: It's good to see you, Holly.
MARTINS: I was at your funeral.
HARRY: It was pretty smart, wasn't it? Oh, the same old indigestion. (takes a tablet) Holly...these are the only things that help - these tablets. These are the last. Can't get them anywhere in Europe any more.
MARTINS: Do you know what's happened to your girl?
HARRY: Hmm. MARTINS: She's been arrested.
HARRY: Tough...tough...Don't worry, old man, they won't hurt her.
MARTINS: They are handing her over to the Russians.
HARRY: What can I do, old man? I'm dead, aren't I?
MARTINS: You can help her.
HARRY: Holly...
HARRY: ...exactly who did you tell about me? Hmm?
MARTINS: I told the police.
HARRY: Unwise, Holly...
MARTINS: And - Anna...
HARRY: Did the police believe you?
MARTINS: You don't care anything at all about Anna, do you?
He laughs.
HARRY: Well, I've got quite a lot on my mind.
MARTINS: You wouldn't do anything.
HARRY: What do you want me to do?
MARTINS (overlap): You can get somebody else...
HARRY: Be reasonable. Give myself up?
MARTINS: Why not?
HARRY: "'Tis a far far better thing that I do," the old limelight, the fall of the curtain?... Holly, you and I aren't heroes, the world doesn't make any heroes...
MARTINS (overlapping): You have contacts.
HARRY: Outside of your stories...I've got to be careful. I'm only safe in the Russian Zone... I'm only safe here as long as they can use me...
MARTINS: As long as they can use you?
HARRY: I wish I could get rid of this thing.
MARTINS: Oh, so that's how they found out about Anna...
MARTINS: You told them, didn't you?
HARRY: Don't try to be a policeman, old man.
MARTINS: What did you expect me to be - part of your...
HARRY: Part? You can have any part you want, so long as you don't
interfere...I have never cut you out of anything yet.
MARTINS: I remember when they raided the gambling joint - you knew a safe way out...
HARRY: Sure...
MARTINS: Yes, safe for you...not safe for me.
HARRY: Old man - you never should have gone to the police. You know you ought to leave this thing alone.
MARTINS: Have you ever seen any of your victims?
HARRY: Do you know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of
things...Victims?
He opens the door of the carriage.
HARRY: Don't be melodramatic. Look down there...
LONG SHOT from Martins' eye line of the fair ground far below and the people now on it.
HARRY: Would you feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you £20,000 for every dot that stopped - would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money?
HARRY: Or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare?... Free of Income Tax, old man...free of Income Tax. It's the only way to save money nowadays.
MARTINS: Lot of good your money will do you in jail.
HARRY: That jail is in another zone...
HARRY: There's no proof against me, beside you.
MARTINS: I should be pretty easy to get rid of.
HARRY: Pretty easy...
MARTINS: I wouldn't be too sure.
HARRY: I carry a gun...I don't think they'd look for a bullet wound after you'd hit that ground...
MARTINS: They dug up your coffin.
HARRY: And found Harbin? Hmm, pity.
HARRY: Oh, Holly, what fools we are, talking to each other this way... As though I would do anything to you - or you to me.
Harry closes the door of the carriage.
HARRY: You're just a little mixed up about things in general. Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don't, so why should we? They talk about the people, and the Proletariat...
Harry: I talk about the suckers and the mugs... It's the same thing.
Harry: They have their five-year plan, and so have I.
MARTINS: You used to believe in God.
HARRY: I still do believe in God, old man... I believe in God and Mercy and all that... The dead are happier dead. They don't miss much here...
Harry's hand in picture - he has drawn on the steamed-up window a heart with an arrow through it. He is writing the word ANNA above it. HARRY ...poor devils.
HARRY: What do you believe in? Well, if you ever get Anna out of this mess, be kind to her.
He opens the door and Martins starts to go through.
HARRY: You'll find she's worth it.
MARTINS leaves the carriage of the big wheel, followed by Harry.

HARRY: I wish I had asked you to bring me some of these tablets from home... Holly, I would like to cut you in, old man. Nobody left in Vienna I can really trust - and we have always done everything together. When you make up your mind, send me a message... I'll meet you any place, any time. Harry: And when we do meet, old man, it is you I want to see, not the police. Remember that, won't you?... Martin moves away but Harry backs up and bars his way on the steps. Music starts. HARRY: Don't be so gloomy...After all, it's not that awful. Remember what the fellow said - in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michaelangelo - Leonardo Da Vinci, and the Renaissance...In Switzerland, they had brotherly love. They had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce?... Harry: The cuckoo clock. So long, Holly. He exits quickly. MARTINS leaning on the rail, looking down thoughtfully. LONG SHOT - MERRY-GO-ROUND - a small boy going round on it. (Harry enters from f.g., looks back - then continues on upstage, toward the merry-go- round. Music stops.) The Third Man Words by Graham Greene, Alexander Korda, Carol Reed, and Orson Welles Pictures by Robert Krasker and Carol Reed The Third Man is available on DVD from The Criterion Collection. * In this day of turning villains like Darth Vader and Hannibal Lecter (and The Joker) into pop icons it should be noted that "back in the day" Harry Lime also became something of a pop fixture, despite being a sociopathic crippler of children. Welles played him so ingratiatingly that the character went on to star in a series of radio dramas starring (and sometimes written by) Welles, and a television series starring Michael Rennie, Lime being reformed from a callous black marketeer to a soldier of fortune.

Our Man in Havana

Our Man in Havana (Carol Reed, 1959) A fascinating serio-comic counter-point to author Graham Greene and Reed's post-war classic The Third Man (made a decade earlier) in which the bold find they can make quite a killing in the cracks created in a transitional government. Reed's camera still swoops (courtesy of d.p. Oswald Morris), making sure that the distended Cinemascope frame is filled to the corners with detail, and the dark streets of Havana at night, (filmed after the revolution and with the quite mercenary permission of Fidel Castro*) could be mistaken for post-war Vienna. The sun shines brighter, though, and so most of the internecine work of spies is done in the relative low-light of bars and brothels.

Greene's book was a cynical look at how Intelligence forces can show a distinct lack of intelligence when confronted with mis-information, but it is Reed's nifty idea to cast it with comedic actors, though not always playing for laughs.  With such as Burl Ives, Noel Coward, Ralph Richardson, Ernie Kovacs (he plays a corrupt Cuban police official straight, but it is still funny) and Alec Guinness, it seems more a comedy of errors: British ex-pat Jim Wormold (Guinness) is scraping by a living selling vacuum cleaners in Havana, while his daughter (Jo Morrow) is developing a taste for the expensive horsey set—something that could be provided by Captain Segura (Kovacks), who has an eye for the blonde girl. Wormold has other plans for her, like an expensive Swiss boarding school.  But where to get the money?

He is approached one day by Hawthorne (Coward, out of place in his dark suit and bowler hat in the mid-day sun of Havana) of the British secret service—or, as he is known, Agent 29500—to set up a bureau station for the service. For Wormold, it is extra cash, an all-expenses paid membership to the exclusive country club, and a more lavish life-style, all for keeping his daughter close. All the Service wants is results, which Wormold has trouble setting up—he is, after all, only a vaccuum cleaner salesman. Soon, he starts filing bogus reports, recruiting strangers as fellow agents (without their knowledge), building his station in importance to the delight of Hawthorne and his superior 'C' (Ralph Richardson).

However, becoming an important secret agent draws attention. He is soon assigned a secretary (Maureen O'Hara) by his superiors, wanting to build him up, and targeted for assassination by his enemies, wanting to shut him up.  Doesn't matter if the information he's sending is all wrong; with so many resources at his command, he's sure to dig up something sooner or later.  Scrutinized from both sides, the spy-game stops being so rewarding, and turns downright dangerous.

It's all played with a bit of a wink, with great comic actors under tight rein to let the material be funny without goosing it. Definitely worth seeing for the literate script, Reed's classic direction and the fine performances.  John le Carré would later use the basic subject matter for his book (and subsequent John Boorman film) The Tailor of Panama. 

* Filming in Cuba with set-visits from Castro and Ernest Hemingway: