Noirvember Watch: Deadline at Dawn (1946)

Watched:  11/04/2025

Format:  Criterion Channel

Viewing:  First

Director:  Harold Clurman

I know a tiny smidge about the Group Theatre in New York in the pre-WWII era, and have made a few connections over the years.  And so it was that I saw Clifford Odets' name come up during the opening credits as the screenwriter, and I got a rough idea of the film that was about to unspool.  Odets was an actor who participated in the Group Theatre movement before finding his footing as a writer - in fact, the writer upon whom the Coen Bros. based the titular character in Barton Fink.

So while Criterion included this movie in with "Blackout Noir", as in "people who lost time and are trying to recover what happened", my attention shifted to the usual social issues and naturalism that I expected to populate the film.  Curiously, the film is also directed by Harold Clurman, one of the Group Theatre directors - in his sole film directing credit.  Methinks it did not go well.

The major spoiler I'll drop here at the beginning is that this movie seems like a wandering mess until the finale slam dunks everything you've seen before, tying together themes, plot elements and character motivation that has seemed... wandering at best.  Honestly, tip of the hat to that end, which is how I'll remember the film.  

Set in New York City, a sailor on leave wakes up in a paper stand being fed black coffee and can't account for how he wound up with a stack of cash.  He wanders into a Taxi Dance hall and meets Susan Hayward.  Together they piece together that he must have stolen the money from a woman he was helping to fix her radio, but they got blackout drunk together.  They go to return the roll and find her dead.

What follows is a bizarrely structured odyssey of people seemingly acting out of spontaneity and with a minimal sense of self-preservation.  We meet a variety of characters, a man mourning his cat, an Orange Julius barista, and more...  and it can make the film feel like it's all over the place.  

Example, a cabby becomes concerned about Alex, our nimwit protagonist, and joins in the hunt for the killer while also consoling Susan Hayward.  He has no reason to do so, but everyone just likes having him around. 

SPOILERS

But it turns out in the final moments that this cabby did it all along, and one of the seemingly random side-stories was actually there to set up why the cabby did it.  

The biggest problem is that the movie never feels structured like a mystery, exactly.  They never figure it out, instead we have a last minute confession.  So it's really a character study of these people and how this woman's death pulls this group together, but it also feels like... bullshit?  And it doesn't help that our focal character/ protagonist is written as a moron who is aware he's a moron.  He almost seems imported as the third guy in the group from a Gene Kelly musical.  

But the rest fo teh cast is great.  A young Susan Hayward gets top billing and she's really terrific.  Paul Lukas as the cabby is terrific.  And Joseph Calleia makes a late entry in the film, but is stunning as the dead woman's mobbed-up brother.  

It's not the first movie I'd recommend to anyone, and it's almost more interesting trying to sort out what Odets and Clurman werre doing.  Honestly, this movie is just a year before the real noir movement would kick into gear, and maybe if they'd made this in 1952, the picture would have been very different.  I can't say.  But knowing the background of the writer and director and then how oddly everything unfolds...  it's a curious watch.