The Sun Sets at Dawn

The dialogue in this film is so dreadful, that after 20 minutes of the film, you are rooting for the execution to take place, despite the obvious innocence of the protagonist. Hackneyed writing will always get that kind of result. The script here is terrible. However, believe it or not, the lead actor and actress are even worse than the script. The protagonist, the intended innocent victim of the execution, gives one mundane line after another about his failures in life. After twenty minutes of this, one roots for the execution to take place. The female lead is even worse; bouncing from comatose to hysterical every ten minutes or so. I wish I could find something nice to say about this film, but when you start rooting for an innocent man to be fried, you know you are watching the wrong film. Avoid this turkey.

"The Sun Sets at Dawn" is a B-movie. Back in the 1930s-50s, B-movies were meant as a cheap second film in a double-feature. Because they were made quickly and inexpensively, they usually clocked in at about 55-70 minutes, had mostly unknown actors and are often today thought of as bad films. Well, the last part is definitely not true--as some B- movies manage to convey an excellent story and are quite entertaining. This is definitely the case with "The Sun Sets at Dawn", as it's extremely effective and entertaining--even without the frills of an A- picture.

When the film begins, the state is about to execute a young man. He's been convicted of murder and still insists he's not guilty. This much isn't unusual--but what is unusual is that everyone that seems to meet him and his girlfriend believes this as well. But the governor won't stop the scheduled death and it looks pretty hopeless. Can something manage to stop this possible miscarriage of justice?

The movie excels in many ways. The performances are awfully good, the writing quite nice as well (though some today might find some of it a bit heavy-handed) and the story really makes you think twice about the morality of the death penalty--especially in cases where it was never 100% proved that the condemned is actually guilty. Well made and worth seeing.

Incidentally, somehow this film slipped into the public domain and is available for a free download at archive.org.

The direction of this 1950 movie I found unrelieved by excessive mawkishness, gloom and melodrama.Like a piece of music all written in a minor key or a picture painted in dark forbidding colours with no light patches.The low budget film studio could not afford to pay famous star actor/director fees to bring in the punters so had to produce and cast the film on poverty row.I suspected as such when I did not recognise one star name in the opening credits.

The danger of executing someone wrongly convicted of murder when the sentence cannot be revoked after capital punishment is ever present in a society which uses this form of justice and which evolves over time.Up until 1965 we had capital punishment in our country and although MP's are given a free vote, since then, the restoration of capital punishment has been debated but never reintroduced.This is how Ian Brady & Myra Hindley (the moor murderers) escaped the gallows.The national feeling of this case was so intense, successive Home Secretaries maintained life sentences on these two criminals until they died of natural causes.

To illustrate how bad the direction was, in "The Sun Sets at Dawn" the set had the condemned and cast members all apparently walking through the Warden's private office, almost like a t.v. black comedy with the electrical process continually not working; when in reality such people would have been kept apart until a more appropriate moment.Adequate 5/10.

Patrick Waltz is to be executed at dawn. All the wire services and papers in the state are covering it because it's the first use of the state's brand new electric chair. Waltz says he didn't do it, but no one else could have. His girl, Sally Parr, is heartbroken.

Writer-Director Paul Sloan has cinematographer Lionel Lindon shoot it as a peculiarly sparse film noir. The movie takes place in two locations: the prison, and a truck stop run by Housely Stevens, where the reporters wait and discuss what happened. There is no flashback, no femme fatale, and the villain of the piece turns out to be ambiguous. Sloan's world may be black and white, but his story resides in the grey.

Sloan was one of the early auteurs of American film. He broke into the movies as a writer for Edison. His first credit was as co-writer of THE COSSACK WHIP. By 1925, he was writing and directing his own movies for Paramount: 24 of them by 1939. Then nothing until this one, released by Eagle-Lion. Two years he turned out his last movie, in Japan. He died in 1963, aged seventy.

It's a bare outline of a life I offer for a bare outline of a third act for a film noir.

Time seems to stand still in this sluggish suspense snorer that could use some juice from the old sparky awaiting to fry the wrong man in The Sun Sets at Dawn. Even at a slim 71 minutes it still manages to grind interminably along as it trudges from one doom and gloom scene to the next.

It looks like Bill is about to be executed for a murder he did not commit. His girl, the warden, a priest know better and suffer along with him as the hours count down. At the bus depot down the road cynical reporters assemble with guards from the prison having supper, a prison trustee and as luck would have it the real killer making himself conspicuous. While the reporters unravel the case through speculation the trustee tries to get the the guards attention about the convenient presence of the killer but they'll have none of it - neither should the audience.

Dawn auteur Paul Sloane's first casualty is credulity with its ridiculous staging and premise. The dialog is trite with the tortured scenes between Bill and the priest cloying and stilted. The "Front Page" press box lacks the snappy patter and is strictly second string though it does offer up the best of what can be found in Sloane's disagreeable montage stew.