The film’s conceit is ingenious: an Everyman, character actor Edmond O’Brien in a rare leading role, is slipped some slow-acting poison while on vacation in San Francisco. He soon learns the unknown assailant dropped something called “luminous toxin” into his drink at a club. There’s no antidote, and the eerily glowing poison will kill him in a couple days – hence the film’s title, police shorthand for “dead on arrival.”
The film’s best line comes from the physician delivering the bad news. When an incredulous O’Brien asks what it all means, the doctor deadpans: “Mr. Bigelow, you’ve been murdered.”
High Concept Classic
In 1950, they didn’t use phrases like “high concept” – but that’s just what D.O.A. is – a terrific “idea” film that. unlike many of today’s high concept thrillers, pays off by taking the thesis and driving relentlessly and cinematically through 84 minutes to a conclusion that’s foregone but satisfying nonetheless.
This film is a great example of why it’s the trip, not the destination, that matters.
A small-town California accountant and notary public, O’Brien’s Frank Bigelow, is a regular guy caught in extraordinary circumstances. He leaves his clingy girlfriend behind for a week in the Big City, after telling her he has to think about their relationship.
He checks into a San Francisco hotel, where he parties with other guests, winds up at a jazz club, briefly leaves his drink unattended and ends up feeling strangely ill the next day.
After the diagnosis, all the doomed accountant can do is become his own personal homicide detective – and work fast.
San Francisco Locations
There’s not a wasted frame in director Rudolph Mate’s brilliant, low-budget masterpiece. This was just the fourth film he directed, after two decades spent as the cinematographer on great movies including The Passion of Joan of Arc, Prix de Beaute, Dodsworth, Come and Get It, Love Affair, Pride of the Yankees, Gilda and The Lady From Shanghai.
The Polish director apparently knew as much about story as he did about lighting movies, because while the script, by Russell Rouse and Clarence Greene, is excellent, Mate’s hand ensured a relentless pace. Better still, much of the film was shot on location in San Francisco, adding a gritty realism and believability that serve the film well.
Surprising Sitcom Connections
Pamela Britton is adequate – though whiny, thanks to the otherwise superb screenplay – as Paula, the girlfriend who follows him to San Francisco. Britton, an obscure B-actress, is best remembered today as the landlady on TV’s My Favorite Martian.
The film introduces Beverly Garland, billed here as Beverly Campbell, in a small role. And if you watch carefully, you’ll spot the unbilled Jerry Paris – later the memorable neighbor on the Dick Van Dyke Show and eventually a busy sitcom director – as a bellhop.
Luther Adler delivers his usual excellent work, here as a gangster, and Neville Brand relishes his role as a sadistic henchman whose maniacally evil grin rivals that of Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death.
The great Dimitri Tiompkin provided a superb score
Ignore the Dennis Quaid Remake
Don’t bother with the lame 1988 remake with Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan; the original D.O.A. is the far superior film. It’s a reminder of how thrillers should be made – with a breakneck pace suggesting life and death.
As the hero searches for the meaning of his own death, we live and die with him. Isn’t that the kind of rollercoaster ride movies are supposed to provide to the people paying to see them?
