D.O.A. (1950 film)

D.O.A. is a 1950 American film noir directed by Rudolph Maté, considered a classic of the genre. The frantically paced plot revolves around a doomed man's quest to find out who has poisoned him and why. This film marks the debuts of Beverly Garland (as Beverly Campbell) and Laurette Luez.

D.O.A.
Theatrical release poster
Directed byRudolph Maté
Produced byLeo C. Popkin
Screenplay by
Story by
  • Russell Rouse
  • Clarence Greene
Starring
Music byDimitri Tiomkin
CinematographyErnest Laszlo
Edited byArthur H. Nadel
Production
company
Harry Popkin Productions
Cardinal Pictures
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release date
  • December 22, 1950 (1950-12-22)
Running time
84 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

The film stars Edmond O'Brien and Pamela Britton.

Leo C. Popkin produced D.O.A. for his short-lived Cardinal Pictures. Due to a filing error, the copyright to the film was not renewed on time,[1] causing it to fall into the public domain.

Plot

The film begins with what a BBC reviewer called "perhaps one of cinema's most innovative opening sequences."[2] The scene is a long, behind-the-back tracking sequence featuring Frank Bigelow (Edmond O'Brien) walking through the hallway of a police station to report his own murder. Oddly, the police have been expecting him and already know who he is.

A flashback begins with Bigelow in his hometown of Banning, California, where he is an accountant and notary public. He decides to take a one-week vacation in San Francisco, but this does not sit well with Paula Gibson (Pamela Britton), his confidential secretary and girlfriend, as he does not want her to accompany him.

Bigelow accompanies a group from a sales convention on a night on the town. At a "jive" nightclub called "The Fisherman," unnoticed by Bigelow, a stranger in a distinctive coat and scarf swaps his drink for another and skulks away. The nightclub scene includes one of the earliest depictions of the Beat subculture. The next morning, Bigelow feels ill. He visits a doctor's office, where tests reveal he swallowed a "luminous toxin" for which there is no antidote. A second opinion confirms the grim diagnosis, and the other doctor implies that the poisoning must have been deliberate. Bigelow remembers his drink tasted strange.

With a few days to live at most, Bigelow sets out to untangle the events behind his impending death, interrupted occasionally by phone calls from Paula. She provides the first clue: a man named Eugene Phillips, who had been urgently trying to contact Bigelow for the last few days, had suddenly died. Bigelow travels to Phillips' import-export company in Los Angeles, first meeting Miss Foster (Beverly Garland) (whose on-screen credit reads "Beverly Campbell"), the secretary, and then Mr. Halliday (William Ching), the company's comptroller, who tells him Eugene Phillips committed suicide by jumping from the balcony of his high-rise apartment a day earlier.

From there, the trail leads to Phillips' widow (Lynn Baggett) and brother Stanley (Henry Hart), from whom he learns that Eugene had been arrested 2 days ago and made bail 1 day ago. Six months earlier, Eugene had sold some rare iridium to a dealer named Majak and the iridium turned out to be stolen. Eugene had bought the iridium from a George Reynolds and then 2 months ago, had grown suspicious that something was wrong.

As it turned out, Bigelow was the notary who had notarized the bill of sale document for George Reynolds made out to Eugene Phillips. Eugene could have proven he made a legitimate deal and cleared himself legally via the bill of sale but the document had mysteriously gone missing. Eugene thought Reynolds took it and that Reynolds was the only one who had reason to eliminate evidence of the transaction. He had been trying but had been unable to locate Reynolds.

In trying to find Reynolds, Bigelow connects Phillips' mistress, Marla Rakubian (Laurette Luez), to gangsters led by Majak (Luther Adler). They capture Bigelow and take him to Majak, where he learns that Reynolds, actually Majak's nephew, whose real name was Raymond Rakubian, died about a month after the sale in the same manner of being poisoned. Majak had no reason to want to kill Bigelow since the bill of sale was from a "Reynolds" not "Rakubian". However, now Bigelow has learned too much, ie, that Majak had Rakubian unload stolen stuff on Phillips, then bought it back from him. So Majak, aware he could be subject to ten years in prison and at his age that would be the rest of his life, orders his psychopathic henchman Chester (Neville Brand) to kill him. However, Bigelow manages to escape and Chester is killed by the police while attempting to kill Bigelow.

Bigelow now thinks Stanley and Miss Foster are his killers, but now in a plot twist, when he confronts them, he finds Stanley has just been poisoned too, after having dinner with Mrs. Phillips and Halliday. Stanley produces a letter, found in Eugene's desk that very day by Miss Foster, evidence that Halliday and Mrs. Phillips have been having an affair. Bigelow directs Foster to call an ambulance and tells them what poison has been ingested so that, in Stanley's case at least, prompt treatment may save his life.

Upon confronting Mrs. Phillips, Bigelow learns that she originally diverted him with the theft of the iridium issue ... Eugene died because he had discovered the affair, quarreled with Halliday, and Halliday threw him off of the 6th floor balcony. They hoped this would make it seem that Eugene committed suicide, that he was guilty and wanted to avoid the potential prison sentence. However, when they discovered that there was evidence of his innocence in the notarized bill of sale, Halliday targeted Bigelow, who had knowledge of that document.

Bigelow seeks to track Halliday down at the Phillips company and soon Halliday emerges. He is wearing the same distinctive coat and scarf as the mysterious man in the bar who had switched Bigelow's drink for the poisoned one. Halliday draws a gun and shoots first but Bigelow shoots him to death, firing several bullets into him.

The flashback comes to an end. Bigelow finishes telling his story at the police station and dies, his last word being "Paula." The police detective taking down the report instructs that his file be marked "D.O.A."

Cast
Marla Rakubian threatens Bigelow when he comes to her for information.
Edmond O'Brien as Frank BigelowPamela Britton as Paula Gibson
Luther Adler as MajakLynn Baggett as Mrs. Phillips
William Ching as HallidayHenry Hart as Stanley Phillips
Beverly Garland as Miss FosterNeville Brand as Chester
Laurette Luez as Marla RakubianVirginia Lee as Jeannie

Additional cast members:

Reception
Alternate theatrical release poster

Critical reception

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 had a "good deal of drive", while Britton adds a "pleasant touch of blonde attractiveness".[3]

In 1981 Foster Hirsch carried on a trend of more positive reviews, calling Bigelow's search for his own killer noir irony at its blackest. He wrote, "One of the film's many ironies is that his last desperate search involves him in his life more forcefully than he has ever been before... Tracking down his killer just before he dies — discovering the reason for his death — turns out to be the triumph of his life."[4] Critic A. K. Rode notes Rudolph Maté's technical background, writing:

D.O.A. reflects the photographic roots of director Rudolph Maté. He compiled an impressive resume as a cinematographer in Hollywood from 1935 (Dante's Inferno, Stella Dallas, The Adventures of Marco Polo, Foreign Correspondent, Pride of the Yankees, and Gilda, among others) until turning to directing in 1947. The lighting, locations, and atmosphere of brooding darkness were captured expertly by Mate and director of photography Ernest Lazlo.[5]

Michael Sragow, in a Salon web review (2000) of a DVD release of the film, characterized it as a "high-concept movie before its time."[6] Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide (2008) gave D.O.A. 3½ stars (out of 4).

Accolades

In 2004, D.O.A. was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

The film was nominated for two American Film Institute lists:

Production

The shot of Edmond O'Brien running down Market Street (between 4th and 6th Streets) in San Francisco was a "stolen shot," taken without city permits, with some pedestrians visibly confused as O'Brien bumps into them. D.O.A. producer Harry Popkin owned the Million Dollar Theater at the southwest corner of Broadway and Third Street in downtown Los Angeles, directly across the street from the Bradbury Building at 304 South Broadway, where O'Brien's character confronted his murderer. Director Rudolph Maté liberally used Broadway and the Bradbury Building during location shooting and included the Million Dollar Theater's blazing marquee in the background. The theater would later serve the same function when Ridley Scott filmed Blade Runner at the Bradbury Building.

After "The End" and before the listing of the cast, a credit states the medical aspects of this film are based on scientific fact, and that "luminous toxin is a descriptive term for an actual poison."

The bop jazz band playing at the Fisherman's Club while O'Brien's glass is being spiked was filmed on a Los Angeles soundstage after principal photography was completed. According to Jim Dawson in his 1995 book Nervous Man Nervous: Big Jay McNeely and the Rise of the Honking Tenor Sax, the sweating tenor saxophone player was James Streeter, also known as James Von Streeter. Other band members were Shifty Henry (bass), Al "Cake" Wichard (drums), Ray LaRue (piano), and Teddy Buckner (trumpet). However, rather than use the live performance, the music director went back and rerecorded the soundtrack with a big band, not a quintet as seen in the film, led by saxophonist Maxwell Davis.[9] Film score was composed by Dimitri Tiomkin.[10]

Remakes

D.O.A. was dramatized as an hour-long radio play on the June 21, 1951, broadcast of Screen Director's Playhouse, starring Edmond O'Brien in his original role.

The film was remade in Australia in 1969 as Color Me Dead, directed by Eddie Davis.

In 1988 it was filmed again as D.O.A., directed by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton, with Dennis Quaid as the protagonist.

In 2011, the Overtime Theater staged a world-premiere musical based on the classic film noir. D.O.A. a Noir Musical was written and adapted by Jon Gillespie and Matthew Byron Cassi, directed by Cassi, with original jazz and blues music composed by Jaime Ramirez and lyrics by Ramirez and Gillespie. The new musical played to sold-out audiences during its five-week run, and received two ATAC Globe Awards in 2012 for "Best Adapted Script" and "Best Original Score."[11]

While not a remake, the 2016 video game Deus Ex: Mankind Divided contains the movie as an in-game easter egg. Players exploring a movie theater in the game's version of Prague can activate the projector in a booth at the rear of the theater's mezzanine, which will play D.O.A in its entirety.

See also

References
  1. Hayes, David P. (2008). "The Copyright Office Records an Invalid Renewal — Then Corrects Its Error". The Copyright Registration and Renewal Information Chart and Web Site. Retrieved 2015-06-14.
  2. Wood, David (February 26, 2001). "BBC review: D.O.A." BBC. Retrieved 2009-09-30.
  3. The New York Times film review, May 1, 1950
  4. Hirsch, Foster (1981). Film Noir: The Dark Side of the Screen. ISBN 0-306-81039-5.
  5. Rode, A.K. (August 30, 2000). "D.O.A. (1949)". Film Monthly. Retrieved 2008-01-17.
  6. Sragow, Michael (August 1, 2000). ""D.O.A.": A murdered man tracks his own killer in this ahead-of-its-time 1950 noir thriller". Salon. Retrieved 2008-01-16.
  7. "AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills Nominees" (PDF). Retrieved August 20, 2016.
  8. "AFI's 10 Top 10 Nominees" (PDF). Archived from the original on July 16, 2011. Retrieved August 20, 2016.CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown (link)
  9. Dawson, Jim. Nervous Man Nervous: Big Jay McNeely and the Rise of the Honking Tenor Sax. Big Nickel Publishing, 1995.
  10. D.O.A. [Soundtrack]: Amazon.co.uk: Music
  11. "22nd Annual ATAC Globe Awards: 2011-2012". Retrieved 2016-07-02.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.