Robert F. Moss writes about “Carol Reed’s masterpiece ‘Odd Man Out'” as photographed by Australian cinematographer Robert Krasker, BSC in ‘The Films of Carol Reed’

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The Films of Carol Reed, Robert F. Moss, Columbia University Press, 1st edition, 20 October 1987, ISBN-10: ‎0231059841, ISBN-13‏: ‎978-0231059848.
Moss, R.F. (1987). Reed’s Masterpiece: Odd Man Out . In: The Films of Carol Reed. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-07501-0_6.

“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.

Seldom in the history of the British movie industry had a director been able to assemble so much first-rate talent. The camerawork was assigned to Robert Krasker, probably the finest cinematographer in England at the time. Fresh from his brilliant work on Laurence Olivier’s Henry V and David Lean’s Brief Encounter, Krasker was one of the few men whose patient craftsmanship and innovative ideas matched Reed’s. …

With the assistance of Krasker’s superb camerawork, Reed is able to convey all the heart-stopping tension and brooding fatefulness of the robbery. …

A stage direction in the script calls for the chimney of the mill to be ‘shot in such a way to give the impression it is leaning forward over Johnny’.:!:~ Krasker complied fully, first establishing- the perspective as Johnny’s and then providing an almost perfectly vertical angle on the chimney. The effect is highly expressionistic, like many of the other touches in Odd Man Out; in fact, it is quite reminiscent of the famous shot in Murnau’s The Last Laugh in which the guilt-ridden Emil Jannings imagines a hotel leaning over him menacingly. …

The slick black streets, the gutters and pavements, the horse-drawn cabs and scudding cars, the refuse and litter, the automobile horns and chatter of pedestrians, the pubs and stores – all these details are caught by Krasker’s camera and become part of the nocturnal frescoes that decorate the already powerful story. Reassessing the movie for The Nation four months after his notice in Time, Agee offers this remarkable verdict: ‘If the world should end tomorrow … this film would furnish one of the more appropriate epitaphs: a sad, magnificent summing up of a night city. Movies have always been particularly good at appreciating cities at night: but of a night city this is the best image I have seen.””

The Films of Carol Reed, Robert F. Moss, Columbia University Press, 1st edition, 20 October 1987, ISBN-10: ‎0231059841, ISBN-13‏: ‎978-0231059848.

Several books have been written about Carol Reed, once hailed as the greatest British film director, known and celebrated for films of the golden age of British filmmaking such as Odd Man Out, The Third Man and The Fallen Idol, but so far the only one I’ve been able to obtain is The Films of Carol Reed by Robert F. Moss, apparently long out of print.

Luckily it can be read at the Internet Archive, as below, and Springer has also made a PDF of it available.

I have yet to read more than this chapter of the book but am looking forward to reading the rest of it soon, especially its coverage of The Third Man, Trapeze and The Running Man, the other three major feature films that Robert Krasker, BSC photographed for his good friend Carol Reed who lived just down the road from Krasker’s Sloane Square flat in the Kings Road, Chelsea.

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