Programme notes CH 02 — Noir After Dark
D.O.A.
A man walks into homicide to report a murder: his own.
The great high-concept of the cycle — poisoned, terminal, and given one reel of life to find out why — opened with a tracking shot down a police corridor that carries the whole premise before a word lands. Edmond O'Brien runs through it sweating like the deadline is real. The film is in the public domain because someone forgot to renew a form, which for a story about small clerical events with fatal consequences is almost too fitting.
Credits — follow anyone
- Directed by
- Rudolph Maté
- Photographed by
- Ernest Laszlo
- With
- Edmond O'Brien · Beverly Garland · Lawrence Dobkin · Frank Cady · Luther Adler · Neville Brand
Every name is a door — each opens onto everything else that person made in the network.
The thread · every thread
Two men narrating their own autopsies. Noir's boldest structural idea — the voice that already knows how this ends — done first on poverty row, then with a studio's polish.