Odd Man Out

A film set in Belfast. Johnny McQueen leads an organisation. He escaped from prison and has been hiding in a house for months. A robbery is planned. A factory payroll is to be taken. His men are ready. But Johnny has not been outside for months and his strength is gone. He goes anyway. The robbery is carried out. A man grabs him on the way out. A struggle starts. A gun goes off. The man dies and Johnny is hit. The car moves. Johnny falls. The crew leave him. From there the film lasts one night. Johnny is in the street. Wounded, bleeding, unable to walk. The city is looking for him. Police everywhere. From there the narrative consists of encounters. A woman finds him in a shelter. She helps him and then is frightened. Two sisters take him into their house. They argue and think about calling a policeman. A cab driver leaves him in a scrapyard. A man who keeps birds takes him home. A painter wants him. He wants to draw the face of a dying man. A priest is looking too. Not to save him; to save his soul. What the narrative is interested in is not politics but a pretext: its idea is that everyone wants Johnny for something, and that nobody looks at him as a person. The organisation is never named. The city is not named either. The narrative does that deliberately and takes the event out of being a political story. Kathleen loves him. She searches for him all night. The last section is on a quay and the snow is falling. Robert Krasker shot it; the use of light and shadow is the film's signature. Carol Reed counted this his best work. James Mason carries the character with barely a word. The source is F. L. Green's novel. James Mason, Robert Newton, Cyril Cusack, Kathleen Ryan and Robert Beatty are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1940s British cinema and visually strong films. Who it is not for: anyone looking for action; the robbery is over in the first ten minutes and the rest is entirely a walk toward death.