Deadline at Dawn has a Trojan Horse of a protagonist. After a brief prologue, we start the film with Al, a young, square-jawed and impeccably decent sailor on shore leave who proceeds to get himself tangled up in a web of murder and blackmail. The usual, basically. To be honest, this guy's naive to the point of stretching credulity and Bill Williams' performance does little to add layers or nuance to this very broad character. Somewhere along the way though, there's a hand-off that occurs, with Susan Hayward's more streetwise dancehall girl taking precedence. Her character, along with a philosophical cabbie (played by Paul Lukas) are clear standouts here and make for a good, if not quite classic, film noir as they're put through their paces by a twistier-than-average script.Bottom line: Fans of film noir should find a lot to interest them here.

Bill Williams plays Alex Winkley, a sailor on leave who awakens from a drunken blackout to find a large sum of money on his person, which he believes belongs to a young woman named Edna(played by Lola Lane) whom he had helped the night before. Sadly, he finds her dead, and is unsure if he's guilty or not, but is helped by a dance hall girl(played by Susan Hayward) and a friendly taxi driver(played by Paul Lukas) to solve the mystery, which has many suspects, and he only has four more hours until he has to report back to his ship, or be AWOL. OK film noir has likable performances which compensate for the complicated mystery which ends up having a semi-surprising resolution.

Deadline at Dawn (1946)If you can overcome, or overlook, the slightly stilted plot and the improbability of the events (in an O'Henry kind of way, if you know his clever short stories, though the actual writer is Clifford Odets, whose politics are not very visible), you'll be able to catch the really fine acting and directing here. And the nicely felt night crime drama that is really just a beautiful sappy love story (the best kind). The cast is small, the plot twists unreasonable but still enchanting, and the effect, in the end, is tightly wound.While you might think the murder is the central premise (and it's key, for sure), or the sailor's blackout is the main event (and it isn't, really), you will eventually see it's the sailor himself, his utter innocence, that is both the core of the film and the driving force. This is the Odets part of the writing, character driven, and the sailor, through some effect of drinking we assume, has had a brief blackout, and he comes to his senses on the streets of New York with a lot of cash in his pocket. He's troubled, but we sympathize. Then a woman he was with is found dead. Still, this sailor is such the definition of innocence, there's no doubt--almost no doubt--that someone else did it. But who? And how can he defend himself?Enter Susan Hayward, playing at first a kind of professional dance companion (the innocent side of prostitution, and a good match for our man). After work, she wants to help him because he's so clearly a good person, and then a cabbie strangely gets involved, too, sucked into the idea that justice will go wrong if the real killer can't be found. The dead woman had a couple of unsavory friends, and these two get into the plot in stages, and what we end up with is half a dozen clearly defined people all fighting for some small piece of personal clarity and internal well being.It helps that all the actors are first rate small time contributors (Hayward is the one star, and is terrific). It also helps that the whole scenario is limited in time and space, so we get to feel like we are there, in New York, in this small neighborhood at night. It's great stuff on that level alone. The director? It's his one and only film. But the cinematographer was an old pro at the peak of his career, Nicholas Musuraca, who did a whole slew of noirs and dramas, some worth seeing just for the photography ("Spiral Staircase" comes to mind, but see the IMDb list). So whatever the small time credentials of much of the cast, there is some seriousness here that won't let go.If the plot is a little preposterous, it's only because it's trying to package things too neatly. The writing is first rate, beyond plot structure, with some classic quotable lines that are either film noir staples or philosophical nuggets (the latter from the cabby, in particular). A film that would reward a second viewing just for the details of dialog and camera-work.

The biggest thing that Deadline At Dawn has going for it is the snappy dialog by one of the best word-smith's around at the time in Clifford Odets. It really crackles, especially what comes from Susan Hayward's mouth. What prevents it from being top rated noir is the rather unbelievable character of Bill Williams, the green kid sailor from Poughkeepsie.Williams gets himself too much of a snootful of booze and ends up in Lola Lane's apartment with her quite dead. She asked him to 'fix her radio' just like guys ask women to 'see their etchings'. He also has $1400.00 in cash in his pocket and hasn't a clue how that got there either because he was in a poker game with Lane's brother Joseph Calleia, a most crooked gambler.Fortunately for Williams he meets up with a cynical Susan Hayward who sees something in Williams, a naiveté she's not used to in the big city. She helps him investigate Lane's murder and before the cops are called in, they've got an interesting assortment of suspects.The Deadline At Dawn refers to the fact that poor Williams has to get back to his ship by dawn else he be declared AWOL. At times that seemed to worry him more than the fact he's in a nice little jackpot.Deadline At Dawn has a great cast and some great writing. But try as I might I couldn't get convinced about the character of Williams. Nobody could be that naive.