D.O.A. (1949) directed by Rudolf Maté

121 Cassidy Point Drive,Portland ME 04102

19 April, 2023

Description

In one of the most intriguing opening scenes in film history, D.O.A. commences with a lengthy tracking shot of a man as he stumbles into the police office to make an unusual request—he wants to report his own murder. This opening image just about sums up D.O.A., a brisk yet exhilarating noir thriller with one hell of a high-concept. After being administered a deadly poison, the main character has only a few days to discover who dosed him and why. What follows is a glorious mix of high-stakes melodrama and entertaining sleaze all compacted into a concise hour-and-twenty minute running time. Delirious descent into the maelstrom of '40s film noir as a small town businessman trades dull days and a loyal lover for a fling in the jazz nights of San Francisco. How he becomes enmeshed in the crueller, deadlier corruption of LA, solving the case of his own murder, involves a succession of ingenious twists too good to give away. Maté shoots fast and always to the point as he drives his protagonist through endless doorways and rooms which are like trapdoors and boxes in an accelerating nightmare. Maté, whose credits as cameraman include Vampyr, Foreign Correspondent and Gilda, holds it all together with no trouble, and without the slightest appeal to art gives the images the intensity of a dying man's last story.