Film Review: D.O.A. (1949)
Film noir is by its definition (“black film” in French) a very dark genre in which very bad things tend to happen to protagonists. However, few things look as dark and depressive as the main premise of D.O.A., 1949 film directed by Rudolph Maté, nowadays considered one of the most famous film noirs and one of the most influential thrillers in history of Hollywood.
D.O.A. begins with what was arguably the most effective and the most memorable opening of a Hollywood film by that time. A man (played by Edmond O’Brien) walks through Los Angeles police station, arrives to homicide division, introduces himself as Frank Bigelow and reports a murder which happens to be his own. The plot, told through flashback, begins a day earlier when Bigelow, a hard working accountant and notary public in Banning, small town near Palm Beach, decides to spend a little vacation in San Francisco. He needs a little release from his monotonous life and his secretary and lover Paula (played by Paula Britton) reluctantly agrees to let him have. Bigelow is thrilled to enjoy stay at hotel, which is apparently filled with many hard partying people and beautiful women, which, ultimately, gets him to spend evening in a bar. Next days he wakes up with something which appears to be more unpleasant that simple hangover and goes to a doctor. He receives devastating news that he apparently ingested fatal dose of “luminous toxin” that doesn’t have any antidote and that it would kill him in matter of days. Bigelow is convinced that someone poisoned him deliberately and decides to find the perpetrator, using long distance services of still unsuspecting Paula. She tells him that a man named Eugene Phillips desperately tried to contact him before his trip. This is the lead Bigelow follows and when he learns that Phillips has apparently died in suspicious circumstances, he continues investigation that would involve Phillips’ family and business associates, apparently involved in theft of highly valuable iridium.
D.O.A. has all the proper ingredients of film noir – superb black-and-white cinematography, fatalistic tone, antiheroic yet ordinary protagonist who gets in trouble because of his personal flaws and femme fatale – but it gives them unusual spin. Protagonist, superbly played by Edmond O’Brien plays an ordinary man, but with different kind of “normalcy”, in this case developed by emerging post-WW2 middle class, to whom Bigelow belongs. He gets in trouble because he can’t resist temptations of big city with its exotic night life and loose women, so different from monotony of small town. Femme fatale in this particular case isn’t brunette seductress but blonde, played by charming Paula Britton (who would in 1960s become big star in popular TV series My Favorite Martian), which is embodiment of everything good and proper mid 20th Century American society expected of women. It is Paula’s insistence that Bigelow does the right thing, implying marriage, that makes Bigelow test his bachelorhood on a trip that would ultimately become fatal.
Script by Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene has an original idea and because of it D.O.A . is sometimes described as Hollywood’s first “high concept” film, made decades before such practice was fashionable. But, it looks that Rouse and Greene exhausted much of their creativity with that idea and the plot appears much underwhelming compared with strong opening. Film meanders in tone, with first third looking like comedy as Bigelow acting like “fish out of water” in big town, while second begins unravelling rather unimpressive mystery in which iridium serves as Hitchcockian MacGuffin. The final scenes feature more suspense, much of it provided by Neville Brand as sadistic henchman Chester, and showdown that takes place in Bradbury Building, iconic location later immortalised by similar scene in Blade Runner. It is Rudolph Maté, cinematographer known for his work with Carl Theodor Dreyer and in some of classics of 1940s Hollywood, that keeps those different parts together, making smooth transition and maintaining quick tempo with his superb direction. Black-and-white cinematography by Ernest Laszlo works well but in scenes made in studio and in San Francisco locations, including guerilla-style scenes when protagonist aimlessly runs over streets. Maté also enjoys services of veteran composer Dimitri Tiomkin, whose effective score is complemented by jazz band in a scene that takes place in a night club and depicts emerging Beat subculture built around that music. With proper elements of humor, melodrama, social commentary and action D.O.A. represents a very good example of film noir and a film that deserved its status of classic. As such and with such intriguing premise, it was bound to have many indirect or direct remakes, with most notable being 1988 version starring Dennis Quaid.
RATING: 8/10 (+++)
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