Deadline at Dawn

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 Alex Winkley (Bill Williams), a young, generous, kindhearted sailor visiting New York who stumbles onto a murder, but also in the protective crush on Alex developed by the tough-skinned taxi dancer June Goffe (Susan Hayward) and the earnest philosophizing of taxi driver Gus Hoffman (Paul Lukas). These three characters are brought together by circumstance, and, for reasons not convincingly explained, set off on RKO’s clean Manhattan sound stages to find the killer. Clifford Odets’s script may occasionally prioritize character over coherence, but the film entertains through classic whodunit elements, a coterie of intriguing ancillary characters, and the unwavering screen appeal of Hayward.