Do you realise what you're saying, you're telling me that I'm dead!

Watched D.O.A. by Rudolph Mate tonight. Was attracted to it because its a well-known noir classic, but I was - or so I thought I was - unfamiliar with the director. As it turns out, Mate was the cinematographer for Carl Theodore Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, Howard Hawks' Come And Get It and Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, as well as the Lady From Shanghai, Gilda and an old favourite of mine, Ernst Lubitsch's To Be Or Not To Be. Don't you love surprises! And how things can be connected! What I love about "STUFF" in general is that if you do enough research or looking into things you realize that so many things you didn't know were related actually are. Arguably then I'm unfamiliar with Mate as a director, but am quite familiar with his work as a DP. The fun doesn't stop there though: it also turns out that Edmond O'Brien, the lead actor, has made a career in a number of major classics like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Barefoot Contessa, Julius Caesar, White Heat and The Killers. So yeah, very excited about tonight's movie - just comes to show how much more there is to know about the people who make the films I watch!

It's very apparent that the film was pretty low budget, but that the film was shot in San Francisco really works well to create a believable gritty realism. Mate establishes the mysterious tone right off the bat when O'Brien walks into an SF police station to report his death that happened... the previous night. Say what?! - is and was probably the most automatic response. The film hence takes place through the retelling of the previous nights events and piece by piece we come to understand just what makes it possible for O'Brien to be alive to tell his story, while maintaining the claim that he was killed the night before. The ingenious premise puts the viewer on his toes and keeps him there as O'Brien scrimmages between So Cal and SF to figure out who killed him - and why.

There are a good many elements that I liked, such as O'Brien's unpretentious everyman quality; the pretty woman a The Fisherman bar who only said "Easy!", but said it well; old San Francisco trolleys; the test tube of luminous poison that glowed in the dark; the split second when o'Brien looks like Keanu Reeves (observe photo #; the abandoned factory scene; "You know - you really frighten me"; how the thugs graciously allow O'Brien a nice long conversation with his lover so he can tell her to take all their money out the bank and buy herself a nice coat???; Chester, the silly psychopathic boy who's "unhappy unless he sees pain"; how the bus scene was shot - the list goes on. Really, just a fun, enjoyable film.

I've been a bit of a spoiler rat lately, so the last thing I'll say is that the ending does not disappoint! Watch and enjoy.