Some very serious contributors to film art created this almost forgotten whodunit. Deadline at Dawn was adapted from a novel by Cornell Woolrich and the screenplay was written by Clifford Odets. Cinematography was by Nicholas Musuraca and direction by Harold Clurman. That's some pretty good bloodlines. Moreover, the principal roles were played by young, sparkling Susan Hayward and by the always reliable Paul Lukas.
I found it a fascinating film and, strange to say, quite original. Original?? When almost all the plot elements come directly from the vault of overused noir tropes and cliches? Yes, a murder is perpetrated in the first scene. And guess what? We the spectators are kept in the dark and only see the killer's back and hands. And, oh no, an innocent man is accused of the murder and has only a few hours to prove that he didn't do it. But as luck would have it he falls in with a worldly-wise young lady who undertakes to help him and with whom, you can bet the house, he's soon going to fall in love. There's also a "bad girl" who does a little in the blackmail line. And a tough, excitable gangster who several times pulls a revolver out of the breast pocket of his vividly checked suit jacket. There are not one but two car chases. And a shrink-wrapped pair of deep-dyed red herrings. A pair of not-so-bright police detectives. Believe it or not, the film digs so deep into the treasury of cliches that it brings up a brief episode of -- gasp-- amnesia.
Nevertheless, these predictable elements are deployed in genuinely surprising ways. I confess that I was taken by surprise by twists and turns in the plotting and I never had the least clue that the wise old cabbie would play so important a part in resolving the mystery.
Deadline at Dawn defies the genre -- a bit. In 1940s murder mysteries, it's taken for granted that American society is massively corrupt and venal to the core. Everyone is on his own and everyone is on the take. But it's not so in this film. The young sailor who is accused of murder is a decent, upstanding patriotic young man. The woman who comes to his aid pretends to cynicism but turns out to be as innately noble as he. The various minor characters whom Alex and June encounter during their hunt for the real killer are uniformly kind. There's a newsstand owner who returns to Alex the wad of cash that falls out of his pocket; a fruit seller who joyfully packs for Alex a bag of bananas; the nervous guy who acts suspiciously but is only worried about his dying cat; the apparent stalker who turns out to be a harmless eccentric; the "super" and his wife sitting on the stoop who appear to be hostile but help June find her way; the policemen who come to the aid of the drunken baseball player; the blind pianist who turns out to be not villainous but just unhappy; and especially, the philosophical taxi-driver who sacrifices himself to help Alex. The blackmail and the murders are overlaid on a culture of decency, so that the upbeat conclusion seems to be organic and natural rather than a mechanically-attached Hollywood ending.
I suspect that the supporting cast of thoughtful kind working-class stiffs is the contribution not of Woolrich but of Odets.
Who would have thought it? A noir whodunnit with a heart of gold.
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