Odd Man Out (1947)

I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Carol Reed directed some of cinemas best. The classic "Third Man" is superbly shot in night-time just post-war Vienna with a compelling, driving script by Graham Greene and a star performance from Orson Wells.Odd Man Out gets the full Third Man treatment - the great direction, the photography, the location shooting, a starry lead. But not a coherent story or tone. Some of it is frankly crass and irritating. Robert Newton - once again - plays a wild-eyed boisterous drunk as per "Outcast of the Islands. The dying of IRA martyr figure "Johnny" (Mason) is infinitely drawn out for almost the length of the film against which Newton's shorter but still overlong OTT turn as the drunken artist is a comic diversion which sits very uncomfortably with the body of the film. So too the whimsical elderly comic nark who craftily tries to turn Johnny in for the £1000 reward (£50,000? in today's money). The extravagant scene towards the end where Johnny tries loudly (it should have been troubled and feverishly) to square his actions on behalf of the IRA with his Catholic faith descends into bathos. The film is visually splendid, full of incident, characters and performances, indeed too much. But Mason is off-form and gives a dialed in performance as if not being convinced by the whole thing.There may well be a great film inside here, waiting to be edited and perhaps 30 minutes removed. Robert Newton was a great actor, it's not his fault here but the removal of the entirety of his scenes would be a good start and distinct improvement.

Carol Reed had a supreme talent for adapting novels to the screen. This was partly because he knew how to work with writers- the scripts for both this and the more widely known Reed classic, Third Man, were written by the respective novelists. Yet, film is a director's medium first and foremost, and while adapted from the work of different writers, both this and Third Man certainly seem like the work of the same artist. Both films have an almost morbid fascination with the hopelessness of the transgressor, and both are infatuated with the loneliness of crowded cities. The sets of Balfast in this movie are not even very realistic looking, yet this is a supremely urban work. The blocking of the extras is extraordinary, conveying the sense of a million teeming stories in one troubled metropolis. The two narrative works the film most reminded me of were Ulysses, just because they're both about Irish urbanity, and The Iceman Cometh, because both feature fascinatingly despairing dialog meditations on the hopelessness of political action, and the need to drown such despair in whiskey.

Atmospheric and visually impressive story that is metaphoric and at times mesmerizing. Most film buffs are bewitched by this and rant endlessly about its greatness and maybe so. It sure is complex and uncompromising in a lot of ways but it takes a great amount of effort on the viewers part to sustain the wonderment for such a lengthy film. It could have been just as powerful and not as plodding and heavy going if it was a bit thinner. The great hypnotic and hallucinatory images and the stylish touches keep things together albeit at a very slow pace and there are some interesting and some irritating characters. Wildly cinematic allegories and parables aside, it is unapologetically European and pure film noir to be ethnocentric, is almost always American. The British efforts somehow seem more maudlin and self conscious and their urban milieu is inevitably physically war-torn rather than pathological and therefore a separation and categorization of of the two types of the noir style is necessary.The cultural separation is significant and therefore this should be labeled as an excellent example of foreign film-noir.

I have always loved this film. I discovered it in my teens, and to me me it has always represented exactly what the film makers said: the unpredictability of the human heart when people meet other people, whether in distress or otherwise.Both my parents emigrated to the United States, one from Scotland and the other from Ireland, both Protestants, and both regarded this film as a masterpiece. Both were pro-British. Which makes me wonder why so many British commenters find fault with this film, particularly with such details as the authenticity of accent and validity of the Republican cause, while neglecting the human aspect of the story, i.e., the remorse and the slow death of the James Mason character. It seems that the British have a deep-seated prejudice against the Irish that gets in the way of seeing any situation from anything other that that prejudiced viewpoint.Comments?