Brilliant and touching

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Deadline at Dawn has a Trojan Horse of a protagonist. After a brief prologue, we start the film with Al, a young, square-jawed and impeccably decent sailor on shore leave who proceeds to get himself tangled up in a web of murder and blackmail. The usual, basically. To be honest, this guy's naive to the point of stretching credulity and Bill Williams' performance does little to add layers or nuance to this very broad character. Somewhere along the way though, there's a hand-off that occurs, with Susan Hayward's more streetwise dancehall girl taking precedence. Her character, along with a philosophical cabbie (played by Paul Lukas) are clear standouts here and make for a good, if not quite classic, film noir as they're put through their paces by a twistier-than-average script.Bottom line: Fans of film noir should find a lot to interest them here.

This was something of a misguided, knuckle-headed murder-mystery featuring an endless collection of characters strolling in and out solely to deliver their red-herring lines. It was more of a Depression-era stage play, I thought. What I most objected to, though, was those who compared it to "Naked City" and claimed it was an excellent tale portraying New York City of the late 1940's. Really? There was NOTHING that even sniffed of NYC here. Could have just as easily been Cleveland or Milwaukee. All shots were of deserted noir-ish street corners (where cabs were conveniently hanging out for some reason) or of interior apartments. We can't be insulting "Naked City" for this second-draft of a script. Too many inexplicable characters trying to nudge this too-convoluted-for-its-own-good story forward. Worst of all was the premise itself: Why couldn't this sailor simply get on his battleship and sail away? I mean, was anyone from the NYPD chasing him? No stakes here. All mood. On the other hand, Susan Hayward was absolutely radiant. Worth the price of admission alone. And the opening line was great: "You're not dead yet?"

Cornell Woolrich's "Deadline at Dawn" first saw the light of day as "Of Time and Murder" in a 1941 edition of Detective Fiction Weekly but cried out for an expansion treatment. In 1943 as "The Clock on the Paramount" it was re-submitted and published under the psuedonym of William Irish. Aside from Woolrich, the movie also bought in Clifford Odet's who wrote the screenplay and I, also, love the quirky and philosopical dialogue the characters utter. The film also captures the desperation and sometimes hopelessness of New York night people. None more so than June ("call me June, it rhymes with moon"). Susan Hayward's character was called "Bricky" in the original story, a more fitting name considering Susan Hayward's red hair!!June, a taxi dancer, has a dream to go home to her hometown of Norfolk, Virginia - she feels the city is keeping her a prisoner and she isn't strong enough to break it's grip. When she finds out that Alex (Bill Williams), a young sailor who she meets on the dance floor is going to meet his ship in Norfolk, she feels a special bond with him. In the book - in a Woolrich coincidence, they find they both come from the same town and both of them make a pact that, together, they should be strong enough to break the city's bonds. They give each other till dawn to solve the murder and then they can catch the train for a new life. The movie, with a wartime setting, doesn't have time for deeper feelings - Alex's train leaves at 6 a.m. and after that - who knows!! but June still has to help Alex clear himself of murder. Before he meets up with June, through a series of circumstances he awakes to find he has $1400 in his pocket. When he returns with June to Edna's (Lola Lane) apartment they find she has been murdered.The first scene is chilling, a woman appears to be dead, a fly crawls over her face, but then her eyes flicker - she is only asleep. It is Edna and she has just had a visit from her ex- husband (Marvin Miller), a blind pianist, who is angry because she hasn't got the $1400 she promised him. As well as being a prostitute, she has also a lucrative blackmailing business and as the night wears on many people pop up who may have a motive for murder!!This is a superlative film with marvelously created atmosphere of dark alleys, cheap apartments and lonely diners. Paul Lucas, who won an Oscar the year before for his performance in "Watch on the Rhine", has a role that really took him out of his comfort zone as Gus, a deep thinking cab driver. He picks up Alex who is chasing a nervous man who is running away from the apartment block but when they find the man, he is frantically looking for a vet!!! Gus forces Alex to confide in him. With only a couple of sets the claustrophobic action is mainly confined to the dead woman's apartment. Other people wander into the film, Edna's gangster brother (Joseph Calleia), a young couple who are having problems with the wife not telling her husband where she has gone on that particular night.Susan Hayward, spirited and vulnerable but looking like a million at the same time had just returned to the movies after giving birth to twins!!!

A young sailor on leave wakes up at midnight in a newsstand with bundles of money in his pockets and no recollection of his time spent with the wrong woman. Of course she turns out to be dead and he has until a bus leaves at 6am to discover the culprit or he gets the rap.I like films with concentrated wandering, this one has it, the entire film like a slow ride across New York after hours in the backseat of a cab with windows rolled down, it's the middle of August, the macadam breathing out the day's heat again, or like lounging by the open window of your apartment with lights turned off, glimpses of strange figures stalking the empty and sweltering streets below and imagining mischief from them.It has mood above all, latenight paranoia being sweated out from pores in the skin. Everything looks a bit unhinged in that magic-desolate way that is summer in the big city.But this is deeply noirish in a key way, the way of the dumb guy's dream that crystallizes the essence of noir. Our man was out at night dreaming but has no recollection what about, except it involved offers of sex and illicit money. We presume he's innocent because of his naive blond looks and because he's the one telling the story, and is bewildered as he does, because more likely suspects are paraded, stories are piled, testimonies, conjecture, a drunk man uncovers hidden truth, a cab driver reflects about love, but the puzzle persists, the puzzle that is the night of life; we cannot really know, there is a blank spot at the center. Emptiness behind the stories that we make up to narrate our private worlds.You will need no more eloquent parallel about what this is all about than a blind pianist among the suspects and being - mistakenly - sussed from his melodramatic reaction.So we have sinister happenings back in the waking world, itself rendered as something you wake up from. Then our film as a dream attempting inner balance, so of course thick in coincidence, in strange but kind souls assisting, capped off with a miraculous revelation in the end that absolves guilt.This is truly wonderful stuff that has burned itself into my visual imagination. It's clean and dark both, the shadows all in having traveled, having dreamed the night away.