DOA: The Newer Version of the Movie Is One of Bright Colors, of Southern Sunshine, of Heat
It's always hard to remake a movie that has achieved classic status,as is the case with the 1950 movie DOA. But Annabel Jankel and RockyMorton's 1988 remake of the film breathes new life into it. The basicquestion that must be posed to the directors of any remake is: Why bother'Why not make an entirely new movie' The answer in the case of this film isthat the directors have created a new movie out of an established story andhave done so in large measure by using more modern camera techniques. The 1950 version of DOA, directed by Rudolph Mate and starring EdmondO'Brien and Pamela Britton, is a fairly classic of film noir. In partbecause the film was shot in black and white, but mostly because of thedirectorial decisions that Mate made, the film seems to take place in aworld in which there is little light. This is less true of the 1988version, and the basic choices that the director has made about how tolight the actors and the scene very much determines the overall feel of the Both movies tell the paradoxical story of a man who is DOA - dead on
appears to be very much alive to us. The shots are full ofindirect light and much of the action (compared with the older movie) takeplace outside. However, in Jankel and Morton's version of the film, because it is sobright, because the world that we see in the film resembles in its colorand vibrancy and seeming naturalness the world of our own, seems far morefrightening. In the 1950 film, we have a sensethat certainly there is real evil in the world, but we also have the sensethat the evil is bounded, that there is a place of light and not of shadowsjust beyond the camera angles that we are shown. That strong presence of the director, that sense that we in the audience noless than the actors on the screen are under the control of the director,is an essential quality of film noir. This contrasts distinctly with the older version of the film in whichthe lighting is highly artistic: We are aware in almost every scene thatthis is a movie, that we are being forced to follow someone else's script. How does hespend that time' Seeking to understand why he has been killed. The newer version of the movie is one of bright colors, of Southernsunshine, of heat. The particulars of how the murder was committed and thehighly elaborate reasons for it vary from movie to movie, but the centralthrust of the film is the same: A man has been poisoned with a slow-actingagent that gives him twenty-four hours to live (and to die). The movie is thus told as along flashback (which actually contains within it a number of otherflashbacks) that explain to us both how the murder was committed and thereasons for it. By creating a film that does not seem to be particularlyfilmic, the directors have in a way created a sense of dread that is farmore pronounced than that created by the original, far spookier version ofthe movie. We are almost never aware of the scenes actually being lit:While no doubt there was in fact a lot of expensive lighting equipment justbeyond the range of the camera, we don't have the sense that ourperspective has been artificially manipulated as we watch the film. The directors present us with the kind of environment inwhich it is easy to imagine that passions can bubble over, a world in whichit is easy to imagine that people kill each other in ingenious ways becausedeath seems a reasonable response to their troubles. He arrives atthe police station to report his own murder - and then explains to thepolice how it came to be that he is both still alive to report it and whythe crime that he is reporting truly is murder.
Common topics in this essay:
Pamela Britton,
Jankel Morton's,
Rocky Morton's,
,
Rudolph Mate,
world sense,
version movie,
world sense evil,
film noir,
sense evil,
version film,
murder committed,
jankel morton's,
directors created,
easy imagine,
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Acceptance Essays
