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Harold Clurman, the man behind the camera of noir “Deadline at Dawn,” was not one of those directors. Much like Odets’ scripts, Clurman worked better on the stage. He was a long time colleague of Odets from the time the two were members of the Group Theatre, the institution responsible for introducing Method Acting to America via the ...
Deadline at Dawn (1946) If you can overcome, or overlook, the slightly stilted plot and the improbability of the events (in an O'Henry kind of way, if you know his clever short stories, though the actual writer is Clifford Odets, whose politics are not very visible), you'll be able to catch the really fine acting and directing here.
Alex, a sailor on leave, recovers from a drink-induced blackout with a large sum of money belonging to Edna Bartelli, a b-girl who invited him home to “fix her radio.”. He tries to return it with the reluctant aid of June Goth, a sweet but oh-so-tired dance hall girl; they find Edna murdered.
If there’s such thing as a quaint film noir, Harold Clurman’s Deadline at Dawn just might be it. Based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich and taking place over the course of a few nocturnal (and surreal) hours in the Big Apple, the film combines an unmistakable fatalism (the first line of dialogue is “Aren’t you dead yet?”) with an endearing innocence best symbolized in the character of ...
Deadline at Dawn represented not only the sole film directorial effort of Broadway's Harold Clurman, but also the only cinematic collaboration between Clurman and his former Group Theatre associate, screenwriter Clifford Odets. While on shore leave in New York, sailor Alex (Bill Williams) is slipped a doped-up drink by B-girl Edna (Lola Lane).
Deadline at Dawn was the first film that Susan Hayward made following the birth of her twin sons on February 19, 1945. Production on this film started about three months later. This was her last picture for Paramount, where she was utterly miserable, and Universal quickly signed her to a more lucrative contract.
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 ...
