I'm generally partial to film noir, and D.O.A. is about as close to pure noir, at least in spirit, as a movie can be. But I don't like it and never did. Both the director and cinematographer have done brilliant work elsewhere, and the film is no no means incompetently made; but it's poorly written, has way too convoluted a plot, and is for the most part very badly acted. There are no likable characters in the film, and no engaging performances. I grant that much of the outdoor photography is excellent, and that the views of postwar California offer a sociologically fascinating and at times aesthetically striking picture of real life at a certain time and in a certain place. But such ancillary pleasures do not a good movie make.
One of my chief problems with the film is its leading actor, Edmond O'Brien. When well cast, O'Brien could be excellent. He had a fine background in the legitimate theater and could play Shakespeare quite proficiently (as his Casca in Julius Caesar attests). But he is a dull hero. In D.O.A. his mere presence makes his hounded character absurd almost from the start. With Bogart, Ladd or even Dick Powell in the role the movie would have worked better, as these actors, whatever their limitations, were bona fide stars, and would have audience empathy just by showing up. O'Brien, while not a loathsome presence, isn't the sort of actor people care for. He is workmanlike as the unfortunate "hero", but there's no spark there, no reason, from a likability standpoint, to identify with him. My greatest concern for O'Brien was for the actor himself. As he was a heavy-set, beefy fellow, his running up and down stairs all the time made me worry that he might have a heart attack. The best thing about O'Brien, and one of the reasons he was never out of work, is that he was, in the parlance of Old Hollywood, a great dialog man. He always spoke clearly, never muffed his lines; and no matter how stupid the things he had to say might sound, he delivery was impeccable.
In a lesser role, Luther Adler makes a tedious, predictable villain. It's the sort of performance Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt or George Macready could have delivered in his sleep. Adler tries hard, but is defeated by the script; and he is badly photographed and directed. There's no menace to him. As his henchman, Neville Brand is so obviously trying to give the kind of "dangerous" performance that put Richard Widmark over in Kiss Of Death a few years earlier, that he's impossible to take seriously. As the years went by he became a capable screen performer, but here his grinning and eye-popping, while fun to watch, just make him look silly. Pamela Britton is a dull love interest, and like O'Brien seems to be in the wrong film.
How this film ever became a cult classic baffles me. I like dark cinema as much as the next guy, but I don't cherish films just because they're dark, or because they have doomed heroes, or are photographed at night, or offer brilliant, dandyish European villains. Such things had become clichés by the time D.O.A. was made anyway, and the formula was wearing thin. Noirs would continue to be made, fitfully, through the next decade, but in a different mode, more realistically than before, with greater subtlety. D.O.A. is caught between two modes. As it came out in 1950, it still has some of the Chandler-Woolrich feeling of the previous decade: dark cities, eccentric secondary characters, evil women, indifferent or corrupt cops, and an air of fatalism. Yet it also reflects the semi-documentaries of the postwar period in its location shooting and in the absence of much studio artifice, which ought, at least in theory, give it an air of hope, of modernity, which alas, its ironclad plot doesn't possess. It would take the talents of, among others, men like Phil Karlson, Don Siegel and Robert Aldrich to move noirs in a contemporary direction more appropriate to the times. Indeed, Aldrich seemed to have learned a thing or two from this film, which his later Kiss Me Deadly, though vastly superior, seems stylistically to be at times an homage to.
One of my chief problems with the film is its leading actor, Edmond O'Brien. When well cast, O'Brien could be excellent. He had a fine background in the legitimate theater and could play Shakespeare quite proficiently (as his Casca in Julius Caesar attests). But he is a dull hero. In D.O.A. his mere presence makes his hounded character absurd almost from the start. With Bogart, Ladd or even Dick Powell in the role the movie would have worked better, as these actors, whatever their limitations, were bona fide stars, and would have audience empathy just by showing up. O'Brien, while not a loathsome presence, isn't the sort of actor people care for. He is workmanlike as the unfortunate "hero", but there's no spark there, no reason, from a likability standpoint, to identify with him. My greatest concern for O'Brien was for the actor himself. As he was a heavy-set, beefy fellow, his running up and down stairs all the time made me worry that he might have a heart attack. The best thing about O'Brien, and one of the reasons he was never out of work, is that he was, in the parlance of Old Hollywood, a great dialog man. He always spoke clearly, never muffed his lines; and no matter how stupid the things he had to say might sound, he delivery was impeccable.
In a lesser role, Luther Adler makes a tedious, predictable villain. It's the sort of performance Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt or George Macready could have delivered in his sleep. Adler tries hard, but is defeated by the script; and he is badly photographed and directed. There's no menace to him. As his henchman, Neville Brand is so obviously trying to give the kind of "dangerous" performance that put Richard Widmark over in Kiss Of Death a few years earlier, that he's impossible to take seriously. As the years went by he became a capable screen performer, but here his grinning and eye-popping, while fun to watch, just make him look silly. Pamela Britton is a dull love interest, and like O'Brien seems to be in the wrong film.
How this film ever became a cult classic baffles me. I like dark cinema as much as the next guy, but I don't cherish films just because they're dark, or because they have doomed heroes, or are photographed at night, or offer brilliant, dandyish European villains. Such things had become clichés by the time D.O.A. was made anyway, and the formula was wearing thin. Noirs would continue to be made, fitfully, through the next decade, but in a different mode, more realistically than before, with greater subtlety. D.O.A. is caught between two modes. As it came out in 1950, it still has some of the Chandler-Woolrich feeling of the previous decade: dark cities, eccentric secondary characters, evil women, indifferent or corrupt cops, and an air of fatalism. Yet it also reflects the semi-documentaries of the postwar period in its location shooting and in the absence of much studio artifice, which ought, at least in theory, give it an air of hope, of modernity, which alas, its ironclad plot doesn't possess. It would take the talents of, among others, men like Phil Karlson, Don Siegel and Robert Aldrich to move noirs in a contemporary direction more appropriate to the times. Indeed, Aldrich seemed to have learned a thing or two from this film, which his later Kiss Me Deadly, though vastly superior, seems stylistically to be at times an homage to.