D.O.A. (1950 film)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| D.O.A. | |
|---|---|
 D.O.A. DVD cover |
|
| Directed by | Rudolph Maté |
| Produced by | Leo C. Popkin |
| Written by | Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene |
| Starring | Edmond O'Brien, Pamela Britton, Luther Adler |
| Music by | Dimitri Tiomkin |
| Cinematography | Ernest Laszlo |
| Distributed by | United Artists |
| Release date(s) | April 30 1950 (U.S.) |
| Running time | 83 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
D.O.A. is a 1950 movie considered a classic of the film noir genre. The frantically-paced plot revolves around a doomed man's quest to find out who has murdered him – and why – before he dies.
Some trace the film's plot to Der Mann der Seinen Mörder Sucht[1] (Looking for His Murderer), a 1931 German film by Robert Siodmak. The film was remade in 1969 (as the British Color Me Dead) and again in 1988 with Dennis Quaid as the protagonist.
Due to copyright law issues[citation needed], it has fallen into the public domain.
Contents |
[edit] Main cast
- Edmond O'Brien Frank Bigelow
- Pamela Britton Paula Gibson
- Luther Adler Majak
- Beverly Garland Miss Foster
- Neville Brand Chester
[edit] Plot
The film begins with a scene called "perhaps one of cinema's most innovative opening sequences" by a BBC reviewer[2]. The scene is a long, behind-the-back tracking sequence featuring Frank Bigelow (O'Brien) walking through a hallway into a police station to report a murder: his own. Disconcertingly, the police almost seem to have been expecting him and already know who he is.
The flashback that follows begins with Bigelow's deciding to take off from his hometown of Banning, California, where he is an accountant and notary public, for a one-week week in San Francisco. This does not sit well with Paula (Britton), his "confidential secretary" and love interest.
After crossing paths at his hotel with a group from a sales convention, Bigelow accompanies them on a night on the town. He ends up at a jazz club, where unknown to him, a man wearing an overcoat and hat swaps his drink for another.
By the next morning, Bigelow is feeling ill. He visits a doctor, where tests are performed and he is told he has swallowed a "luminous toxin" for which there is no antidote. (Its luminosity and references to iridium imply a form of radiation poisoning[3]).
With only a short time to live, Bigelow sets out to try to untangle the events behind his imminent demise, interrupted occasionally by phone calls from Paula. The murder involves gangsters and shady character, but the key to the mystery is a bill of sale for stolen iridium, which Bigelow himself had unwittingly notarized.
Bigelow tracks down and finds the person who had poisoned him, and shoots him to death in an exchange of gunfire. The flashback comes to an end, and Bigelow, now at the police station, dies. The police detective taking down the report instructs that his file be marked "DOA," or "dead on arrival."
[edit] Critical response
The New York Times, in its May 1950 review, described it as a "fairly obvious and plodding recital, involving crime, passion, stolen iridium, gangland beatings and one man's innocent bewilderment upon being caught up in a web of circumstance that marks him for death"; O'Brien's performance was said to have had a "good deal of drive", while Britton added a "pleasant touch of blonde attractiveness"[4].
25 years later, the same paper published a brief review of the film written by Wallace Markfield, characterizing it as one of a number of the "very best of the B's ... made on workhouse budgets under coolie conditions" with a power "derived from the central image of one chunky, sweating, absolutely desolated human and from the way it puts the spectator inside that human's skin and nerves"[5].
In a 1981 book, Foster Hirsch continued a trend of more positive reviews, calling Bigelow's search for his own killer noir irony at its blackest:
- "One of the films many ironies is that his last desperate search involves him in his life more forcefully than he has ever been before. The as is so. Tracking down his killer just before he dies — discovering the reason for his death — turns out to be the triumph of his life"[6].
A 2000 Salon.com review at the time of a DVD release of the film characterized it as a "high-concept movie before its time"[7].
Perhaps the strongest endorsement came from the Library of Congress, which in 2004 added the film to its National Film Registry.
[edit] Trivia
- The nightclub in this movie includes one of the earliest depictions of the Beat scene.
- Liquid Television's Stick Figure Theater did a version of a scene.
[edit] Quotes
Bigelow: I want to report a murder.
Policeman: Who was murdered?
Bigelow: I was.
Policeman: How shall I make out the report on him, Captain?
Police Captain: Better make it 'dead on arrival'.
[edit] References
- ^ Movie Review from TV Guide
- ^ February 2001 review by David Wood, from the BBC website
- ^ Review from the All Movie Guide
- ^ Melodrama Opens at Criterion, a May 1, 1950 review of the film from The New York Times
- ^ Remembrances of 'B' Movies Past from the August 3, 1975 edition of The New York Times
- ^ Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Screen (1981, ISBN 0-306-81039-5) by Foster Hirsch
- ^ Review of the film from an August 2000 Salon.com article
[edit] External links
- D.O.A. from the Internet Archive, downloadable in various formats
- Internet movie database link
