The Moviegoer

When James Mason knocked over his glass toward the end of "Odd Man Out" and saw the reflection of his enemies shouting at him from the suds, he gave a wild cry and sank to the floor. When the sounding brass of Hollywood got around to viewing the foaming beer, they might well have done the same thing, for this scene and the rest of "Odd Man Out" is so consistently above California crop standards as to blanch the stoutest of the film empire. Even the Irish Republican Army would be shaken.

With a threadbare story and a total lack of spectacular sunsets, or five-minute chases, Carol Red and his crew have filmed twenty-four hours of a lost cause with the realistic effort of a smack in the face. The dialogue bears the dewey stamp of the auld sod; the characterizations are revealing without being talkative; and the scenes are put together to make sense, not to elicit sentiment. The widely varied personages are portrayed with a concentration of acting that make each distinctive. The film strains the emotions, but, thanks to British restraint, net the imagination.

produced last spring, this story of a hunted man and his struggle back to safety is too well known to demand repeating. The picture, however, does bear seeing again, even for a third or fourth time. Robert Newton as a mad artist searching for a mysterious "dying look"; the elfin, almost intangible bird fancier who is overjoyed when he finds a "caged" human; and the plump, insidious informer in a flowered dress who slyly traps the unsuspecting rebels these and the others present a pageant that stands up with Bank's best. Hollywood should watch out lest some wayward Goalie breath blow down its neck and whisper that perhaps it, too, is not long for this world. D.P.S.