Well, it's a thriller and it HAS to be fast paced because poor Frank Bigelow (O'Brien) only has 24 hours to live. He's an innocent law-abiding citizen from Banning, CA, who takes a vacation in San Francisco. (The St. Francis. Whatever he does for a living, it pays well.) When he wakes up after his first night in the city he finds he's been poisoned by a "luminous toxin". To demonstrate the fact, a doc shuts out the lights and the tube of what must be presumed to be chyme glows in the dark. Very dramatic.
O'Brien spends the rest of the movie tracking down the persons responsible for his death -- and, man, it is a tangle of thorns. I got lost in a few places. Something to do with an illegitimate scheme to sell iridium, which I always thought was to be found in meteors or someplace. O'Brien has been murdered because he once notarized a bill of sale that could incriminate a gang of ruffians and thieves.
Among the ruffians and thieves is Neville Brand in what is probably his best role. He is lean and mean here, more animated than in later roles, and less sullen. (Although I liked him in "Cry Terror" too.) He is brutish and dumb. He has the features of some Bulgarian pederast. His hair is coarse and its locks slide around on his forehead as if greased. His eyes shift back and forth. And when he is about to cause someone pain he grins widely and shows us a mouthful of great big chiclets. "I think I'll give it to you in the belly," he gloats while taking O'Brien for a ride.
O'Brien left his girl friend back in Banning and, when he realizes he's dying, he finally comes to terms with the fact that he loves her as much as she loves him. That is, he'd be willing to "commit" in the current code if it weren't too late. Pamela Britton as Paula has a role common to these kinds of films -- blonde, plain but attractive, devoted, efficient, cheerful, brave, kind, thrifty, and reverent. Probably helps old ladies across the street. How extraordinarily dull. Maybe that's the way it was in 1950. Today's modern man likes them beefier, with a black tattoo of barbed wire across their upper arms, and another of a huge dark-green mothlike creature perching on their coccyx. Their hair should come in at least three designer colors, two of them resembling fuschia and chartreuse. A spike collar helps.
Where was I? Poor O'Brien. He doesn't get past Stage Two of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of dying. First Denial. The script gives him a lot of help here. "You're CRAZY! That's it -- you're a couple of PHONIES!", he screams at the doctors who give him the bad news that he's only got 24 hours left. Stage Two: Anger. First he runs through the streets of the city, from Parnassus Hill to the Embarcadero. Then he stops, pauses, sets his jaw grimly, and stalks off to find his murderers.
The fact that he has such a short time to unravel the complicated scheme behind his poisoning forces the pace of the film. O'Brien must have lost ten pounds while running around. He has no time to be polite so he pushes people in mourning around and snarls at strangers. In fact, his impending demise subjects the plot to demands that it can't logically meet. He travels all over the place in those 24 hours, including flying spontaneously from San Francisco to L.A. Things that would take you and me a day to accomplish he seems to zip through in a few minutes.
The score is one of Dmitri Tiomkin's less inspired ones although the usual marching-band dramatics are immediately recognizable. Someone in the Sound Dept. must have gotten the bright idea of using one of those sliding whistles, maybe a new instrument at the time, because there are some jarring uses made of it near the beginning. I wish I could remember the name of that instrument. Snoopy? No, that's a dog.
It's an interesting twist. A movie that opens with a guy wanting to report a murder -- his own. And it really IS fast, so that the holes in the plot don't register all that much. D.O.A. is often cited as a classic noir but I don't know why. It's a murder mystery with a twist. It isn't a classic but it's engaging enough.
O'Brien spends the rest of the movie tracking down the persons responsible for his death -- and, man, it is a tangle of thorns. I got lost in a few places. Something to do with an illegitimate scheme to sell iridium, which I always thought was to be found in meteors or someplace. O'Brien has been murdered because he once notarized a bill of sale that could incriminate a gang of ruffians and thieves.
Among the ruffians and thieves is Neville Brand in what is probably his best role. He is lean and mean here, more animated than in later roles, and less sullen. (Although I liked him in "Cry Terror" too.) He is brutish and dumb. He has the features of some Bulgarian pederast. His hair is coarse and its locks slide around on his forehead as if greased. His eyes shift back and forth. And when he is about to cause someone pain he grins widely and shows us a mouthful of great big chiclets. "I think I'll give it to you in the belly," he gloats while taking O'Brien for a ride.
O'Brien left his girl friend back in Banning and, when he realizes he's dying, he finally comes to terms with the fact that he loves her as much as she loves him. That is, he'd be willing to "commit" in the current code if it weren't too late. Pamela Britton as Paula has a role common to these kinds of films -- blonde, plain but attractive, devoted, efficient, cheerful, brave, kind, thrifty, and reverent. Probably helps old ladies across the street. How extraordinarily dull. Maybe that's the way it was in 1950. Today's modern man likes them beefier, with a black tattoo of barbed wire across their upper arms, and another of a huge dark-green mothlike creature perching on their coccyx. Their hair should come in at least three designer colors, two of them resembling fuschia and chartreuse. A spike collar helps.
Where was I? Poor O'Brien. He doesn't get past Stage Two of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's five stages of dying. First Denial. The script gives him a lot of help here. "You're CRAZY! That's it -- you're a couple of PHONIES!", he screams at the doctors who give him the bad news that he's only got 24 hours left. Stage Two: Anger. First he runs through the streets of the city, from Parnassus Hill to the Embarcadero. Then he stops, pauses, sets his jaw grimly, and stalks off to find his murderers.
The fact that he has such a short time to unravel the complicated scheme behind his poisoning forces the pace of the film. O'Brien must have lost ten pounds while running around. He has no time to be polite so he pushes people in mourning around and snarls at strangers. In fact, his impending demise subjects the plot to demands that it can't logically meet. He travels all over the place in those 24 hours, including flying spontaneously from San Francisco to L.A. Things that would take you and me a day to accomplish he seems to zip through in a few minutes.
The score is one of Dmitri Tiomkin's less inspired ones although the usual marching-band dramatics are immediately recognizable. Someone in the Sound Dept. must have gotten the bright idea of using one of those sliding whistles, maybe a new instrument at the time, because there are some jarring uses made of it near the beginning. I wish I could remember the name of that instrument. Snoopy? No, that's a dog.
It's an interesting twist. A movie that opens with a guy wanting to report a murder -- his own. And it really IS fast, so that the holes in the plot don't register all that much. D.O.A. is often cited as a classic noir but I don't know why. It's a murder mystery with a twist. It isn't a classic but it's engaging enough.