Reed’s Masterpiece: Odd Man Out

Abstract

Happily, Reed’s maturation had not completely outstripped that of the film community that spawned him. The English cinema itself had come of age during the Second World War in a scientific and entrepreneurial sense and now boasted not only a legion of proficient editors, cinematographers, set designers and other technically advanced personnel, but also two major film impresarios, J. Arthur Rank and Alexander Korda, who had created solid foundations for themselves in the 1930s and who had the creative and commercial ambition to put all the new British talent to work. The result of these various forces was a surge of activity in the English cinema which at last made it possible for Britain to break out of her cinematic parochialism and capture a place in the world film community, though it was not a place she was able to maintain permanently. Among directors, Reed was unquestionably the principal force in this exciting movement, and his Odd Man Out — made for Rank’s company, Two Cities, and released in 1947 — provided an especially glowing example of the new maturity of English films.