D.O.A. is an odd movie. It's easily one of my favorite film noir titles, though I'm not even fully certain it really should be classified as such. There's no hard-boiled detective, no double dealing femme fatale (well, there is, but not necessarily central to leading the protagonist astray), no moral gray area the protagonist has to mire through to achieve his goals, no real sense of visual chiaroscuro that has become an earmark (or stereotype, depending on how you look at it) of the genre.
The plot plays like a story taken straight from the pages of EC Comics' Shock SuspenStories. Frank Bigelow (Edmond O'Brien) is poisoned early on and has a finite amount of time to live. We're not spoiling anything there, we're aware of that just by reading the poster. And there's no subtlety regarding when the deed takes place; Frank takes a swig of Bourbon while chatting up a woman in a San Francisco Bar called The Fisherman, we see the drink switch pulled by a mysterious figure in Peter Lorre The Hands Of Orlac-esque garb (minus the hands), and the musical sting following the distasteful look on Bigelow's face after he tastes the poisoned booze, should be blunt enough for anyone who was thus far not paying attention.
Bigelow's poisoning is the starter pistol for a race around various parts of San Francisco and Los Angeles as he tries to piece together why he was picked–seemingly at random–to be slowly assassinated. The reason, when fully explained, may incur a bit of head scratching, and might put viewers off of becoming a notary public, but is really only a flimsy-if-necessary stage for the proceedings to play out upon.
With full knowledge how Bigelow is going to end up at the end of the film, the suspense comes in watching him try to piece the puzzle of Why together before he drops dead. Along the way we're treated to over-the-top psycho hitman Chester, played by Neville Brand with a perpetual mouthful of scenery; the staged suicide of a prominent businessman Frank never knew, but seemingly ties the whole affair together; a shady secretary played by a young Beverly Garland (credited as Beverly Campbell); and a peculiar soundtrack cue in the form of a slide whistle, that appears every time Bigelow is passed by an attractive woman. All of the action and suspense is intercut with some schmaltzy squabbling and cooing between Frank and his secretary, which sometimes drags the pace after things have really built up momentum, but we're dealing with a character who has just lost his life and in turn, is being faced with the reality of what should have been more important to him when he didn't have a definite expiration date on it, so, there you have it.
More than a few reviews I've found of D.O.A., interpret the film as a sort of conservative warning cry to stay in your sleepy little nothing-happens-here town, don't venture into the big, scary, crime-ridden city because all that's waiting there for you is a morgue ticket. Frank does leave sleepy little desert town of Banning, CA to vacation in San Francisco before things go awry, but there's no reason to believe he hadn't been out of it before, or, based on the fact that he was an unwitting participant in a phony exchange of black market goods (albeit a minor one which doesn't really warrant what happens), there's no reason to believe the hoods who come after him wouldn't have descended on that sleepy little desert town to do the same.
I couldn't find a trailer online that wasn't a fan-made affair. If you want to watch the actual film, it's in the public domain and readily available all over the place. Even in colorized format if that's your thing, though it seems like that would take quite a bit away from it.
Of interests to me, so potentially others: the film was directed by Rudolph Maté, who was initially an in demand Polish-Hungarian cinematographer who worked with Fritz Lang and others. After he immigrated tot he U.S. in 1935, he continued to run the camera on a number of films, including Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent and then eventually moved into directing. Maté directed everything from b-westerns and crime films to CinemaScope epics like The 300 Spartans. His two best known efforts might be the subject of this post, and the 1951 science fiction film When Worlds Collide.
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