DEADLINE AT DAWN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 393, 3 January 1947, Page 25

DEADLINE AT DAWN

(RKO Radio)

‘THis also is a pretty highlystrung picture. I get the impression that the producer, faced with an-.assignment to turn. out another murder-

mystery, made up his mind that this was going by hook or by crook to be different. It certainly is different. It’s eccentric. And while I have often beaten out the plea on my typewriter that producers should strive to be original, I feel that-. though the result is by no means without interest-Deadline at Dawn goes rather too far in its effort to do and say the same old things in a new way. _ When you force your way through all the dramatic draperies, verbal embroideries, and extraneous characters which clutter up the picture you find that it is just a simple enough whodunit involv- | ing a corpse (wicked woman blackmailer), an assortment of suspects headed by an innocent young sailor (Bill Williams), and the girl (Susan | Hayward) who loves the sailor, But, believe me, they’re not simple people. It’s the way they talk which makes them stand out from the crowd. Where they learned it is never made exactly clear, but they all sound as if they had been staying up nights reading nothing but Saroyan, Odets, and perhaps O'Neill. Since Clifford Odets wrote the screenpi@y I suspect he is responsible for all

the highflown philosophy which gets spouted by the most unlikely persons in the most improbable places round about three in the morning. "You talk too much," says one of the dicks to one of the crooks in the course of his professional duties. I think maybe they all do. For example, consider the case of the conversational cabbie. Nobody now expects taciturnity among screen taxi-men, but wait till you meet Paul Lukas as he careers his cab around the Bronx, with an epigram or an aphorism for every tick of the meter. "Speech," he says in one of his less profound moments, "was given to man to hide his thoughts" -which suggests that this particular cab-driver’s cerebral activity must be

something terrific. He certainly has every excuse to have something on his mind; but that is part of the plot and I don’t propose to say much about that, not wanting to be an old meanie who spoils your fun by letting the criminal out of the bag before it is time. But just in case you fancy yourself as an amateur dick I do suggest you remember that the director of this film has rather gone out of his way to be difficult and that nothing, except this central fact, is quite as obvious as it seems at first sight. Bearing this in mind you may enjoy yourself in the cémpany of all the queer and very intense people who flit about Deadline at Dawn, several of them with foreign accents and some of them carrying a strong odour of red herrings.