Deadline at Dawn (1946)
Directed by Harold Clurman

Film Review

Deadline at Dawn's main claim to fame is that it was the only film to have been directed by Harold Clurman, an influential theatre director and critic who co-founded the Group Theatre company in New York in the 1930s.  Clurman was himself highly dismissive of the film, happy to write it off as 'run-of-the-mill' in his book All People Are Famous.  Certainly the film ranks pretty low on Clurman's list of achievements but it is by no means without merit, its main virtue being a cracking screenplay by the director's Group Theatre associate, playwright Clifford Odets.  With his customary preoccupation with character detail and social injustice, Odets takes a routine crime novel by Cornell Woolrich and moulds it into one of RKO's weirder film noir offerings, almost completely neglecting the plot as he does so.

Like Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep (1946), Deadline at Dawn is far too preoccupied with its bizarre gallery of characters to waste time weaving a coherent narrative.  It's a film that spits in the face of logic and instead foists on its spectator an inebriated saunter through some of the seedier precincts of Manhattan, the overall impression being that of a chaotic dream in which anything is possible.  Characters behave in ways that would be unfathomable in the clear light of day.  An attractive dancer agrees to play amateur sleuth with a sailor she has barely known five minutes.  They end up tagging along with a philosophical taxi driver who looks like a refugee from a Harold Pinter play.  Creatures of the night spring up every so often to confound or aid the investigation, some just the usual film noir stock characters, others profoundly sinister freaks who appear to be charged with malignant intent.

This is a film that drifts and stutters and seemingly goes nowhere, ultimately culminating in the most laughably implausible of plot revelations.  It does a fair amount to alienate its audience and yet it is, whilst baffling and doggedly unconvincing, ludicrously compelling.  Susan Hayward and Bill Williams appear suitably vulnerable and carelessly insouciant as they stray further into the labyrinth, heedless of what murderous minotaur awaits them at the heart of the shadowy metropolis, and Paul Lukas has fun in the role of a typical Odets man of contradiction, changing his nature like a lizard shedding its skin as the narrative meanders dizzily towards its unhinged denouement.  Nicholas Musuraca's stylishly moody cinematography heightens the growing sense of fear and derangement, and more than compensates for Clurman's lack of directorial skill and enthusiasm.  Deadline at Dawn is an odd movie experience, a drunken binge of a film noir that leaves you disoriented and incredulous, but also strangely exhilarated, not quite sure whether you have downed one glass of port and lemon too many or have merely been hit on the head by a very large brick.

Film Synopsis

Alex Winkley, a sailor on leave in New York City, wakes up to find he has a large wad of cash on his person.  He vaguely recalls that he visited a woman, Edna Bartelli, earlier that evening and concludes he must have taken the money from her.  After mulling things over with a dance hall girl, June Goth, Alex decides to return the money to Edna, but when he reaches her at her home she is dead.  Realising that he is an obvious murder suspect, Alex enlists June's help in a frantic bid to find the killer before the night is out.  The sailor has a deadline he cannot miss: to catch the bus back to his naval base at dawn...