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Carol Reed’s masterpiece of pathos and light penetrates the soul of Irish identity without a single overt reference to the Republican-Loyalist conflict. Too often overshadowed by Reed’s The Third Man (1949), Odd Man Out is far more romantic than Reed’s later film, the mix of Irish accents, church bells, and gentle snowfall a brilliant backdrop for the tale of Johnny McQueen (James Mason), a nationalist fleeing a botched mill robbery with a gunshot wound and relying on the kindness of strangers to help him stay alive. A trickle of blood in his wake, McQueen wanders from taxi to hearth to tavern, barely sustained by his fellow man before reuniting with his devoted lover, Kathleen Sullivan (Kathleen Ryan), in a finale of the bleakest beauty. The film explores the limits of faith, art, and politics like few films of the period, and Robert Krasker’s expressionistic cinematography makes the film’s inescapable gloom appear almost heavenly.
