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.

 

The Sound of Fury (1950)

The Sound of Fury (aka Try and Get Me!, Cy Endfield, 1950) I was watching an old repeat of "British Antiques Roadshow," when Cy Endfield's name came up. Brought up for appraisal was an elegantly designed silver and gold portable chess-set to commemorate the Bobby Fisher-Boris Spassky match in 1972. Much ooh-ing and ahh-ing was made over the piece for its design characteristics and it was mentioned that the fellow responsible was Endfield, described as a "polymath," as magician, engineer, writer, director and inventor. His most famous (and successful) film was Zulu (1964), a genuine British classic, but he also made Mysterious Island (along with Ray Harryhausen)—his Hell Drivers has been posted here. Those films were made in Britain, but he started his career in America, working at RKO (where his magic legerdemain brought him into the orbit of Orson Welles), and where he directed B-movies like The Underworld Story, only to be black-listed for his political beliefs during the McCarthy era.

The film we're talking about today (no matter which title you use) was particularly labeled by the House Un-American Activities Committee for being "un-American." Seeing as the film—and you could properly call it among the darkest of the film noir genre—is an indictment of capitalism, yellow journalism and mob violence, particularly lynching, one could see where this might cause a stir in '50's America. But, seeing as how it was based on an actual incident (which also inspired Fritz Lang's first American film, Fury), one might consider the source.

The film begins with a blind street-preacher haranguing passers-by that judgment day is coming and they should prepare to meet their lord (you know you're in for a rough time at the movies when that's the first thing you hear—evidently his appearance wasn't enough to assuage HUAC). The passersby ignore him, as does Howard Tyler (Frank Lovejoy), who's now out of work and prospects are thin. He's getting tired of it, especially when his wife (Kathleen Ryan) reminds him of his responsibilities and that they have a son to take care of...with another on the way.  

Tyler moves the family to Santa Sierra, California to get a job in the mines, but is unsuccessful. To get away from his wife's nagging, he goes to the local bowling alley where he meets a sharp named Jerry Slocum (Lloyd Bridges, pushing his acting boundaries considerably). Jerry's a vain-glorious dandy who talks big but is a bit schizy and convinces Tyler that working in the mines is a sucker's game, one that'll kill him without much to show for it. Slocum knows of a guy who needs a good driver for some jobs that need a certain level of confidentiality and Tyler agrees.

Those jobs turn out to be knocking over gas stations, and, as much as he doesn't like his part in it, he is at least able to take care of his family...if only his wife didn't ask so many questions about what he does at night. Meanwhile, the robberies are starting to get the attention of a local reporter (Richard Carlson), who gets the assignment to pump up the story as an incipient crime wave to sell papers. Things are starting to get hot and the added attention makes Jerry want out, but that inspires Slocum to pull one last crime—a big score—kidnapping the son of one of the town's rich folk and holding him for ransom.

But, Jerry's not the best at the "long game," being so fidgety and all. When the kid tries to make a run for it, Slocum picks up a boulder and smashes his head in, then dumps him in the river—but not before taking a distinctive tie-pin for evidence. He's still trying to get the ransom for a dead man. The two head out of town, the better to mail a ransom note, and Slocum decides to make things a night on the town with women, so that there's no show of two strangers showing up in town. But, Tyler's in bad shape and starts to drink...and well...you know. Plus, with the added attention of a blood-thirsty press, the temperatures in Santa Sierra start to soar above the boiling point.

Between Bridges' histrionics and Endfield's off-kilter camera-view, The Sound of Fury has more than its share of amped-up energy that starts to explode near the film's end in a sequence of mob violence that still stiffens the hairs on the back of the neck to this day. It's a bit mitigated to off-screen action, but, really, is that something you want to see? Endfield's suggestiveness is enough to give nightmares and paint a grim picture of majority rule when it becomes a mob.

It's been tough to see The Sound of Fury, as it wasn't a hit, and there weren't many prints. One, however, was owned by Martin Scorsese (for whom it's a favorite film) and, with his permission and efforts, the film is back to its pristine, if begrimed, glory.