D.O.A.

While on holiday in San Francisco, commercial lawyer Frank Bigelow (Hollywood veteran Edmond O’Brien) discovers that he has been poisoned by an injection of a virus for which there is no antidote. The doctors give him only a few days to live, which he spends in a frantic search for his killer, without knowing who he is or why he wants him dead. A gripping thriller, an intense and impressionistic picture, where the race against time and the search for certainty create an original journey of anxiety and apprehension. The structure of the film is based on night-time atmospheres and flashback narratives. The film by Maté, an extraordinary cinematographer who later became a director, is based on the 1931 German film Der Mann, der seinen Morder sucht, directed by Robert Siodmak and written by Billy Wilder, and has been remade twice, in 1968’s Color Me Dead and 1988’s D.O.A. – Dead on Arrival.