The Fallen Idol (1948)

The Fallen Idol (1948) is a child's-view psychological mystery Limey classic film noir thriller which delights in a great script, a fascinating and compelling story, top drawer acting from the very best of the age, and is a general talent-mix of both Carol Reed and Graham Green, both at their cinematic best.

The eyes of a child are untrained in perceiving the grey between the morality of black and white. It is on this precarious naivety of youth that Carol Reed hangs the suspense of The Fallen Idol.

Reed, in collaboration with novelist and screenwriter Graham Greene, crafted The Fallen Idol a year before their masterpiece The Third Man. While The Fallen Idol might seem to suggest adolescent growing pains, your assumptions deceive you. The film is nearly as much a noir classic as Reed's Odd Man Out and The Third Man, which bookend it in his all-too-classic none-too-shabby all-so-awesome filmography.

Odd Man Out (1947)

Odd Man Out (1947) by Carol Reed and starring James Mason is a classic British film noir set largely on the streets of Belfast, Northern Ireland, following one man's episodic flight in the night, as he evades the law, while partially aided in his delirious and wounded state, by a variety of comrades, sympathetic locals and other colourful characters.

The noir chops of this outstanding thriller are evident first in the central character of Johnny McQueen, who is a sympathetic villain — almost a double villain if this is a permissible description.

As a handsome and wounded hero pulling off a passable Irish accent, James Mason is fully sympathetic despite his being both an armed robber and a terrorist — the latter at least in the eyes of the state.

The noir feel is further evident in the photography which is stunning in its use of shadows and light on the streets, corners and alleyways. These in fact do presage the similar, more famous and more elaborate work done by Carol Reed in the film The Third Man (1949), which was filmed two years later than this.