The Sun Sets at Dawn (1950) User Reviews

A gratifying success from a washed-up director and a fleabag studio

[bmacv · 7/10 · 5 December 2004]

If there's an object lesson in the gap between expectation and reality, The Sun Sets At Dawn may be it. A product of the Holiday Pictures division of Eagle-Lion Films (which is sort of like saying Starvation Alley off Poverty Row), and the work of a director, Paul Sloane, whose career began in the First World War and who hadn't worked for 11 years (and who had one more – Japanese – movie left in him), it doesn't inspire much confidence. But it has an imaginative narrative structure and a mood and, so much as its pitiful resources would allow, even something of a look.

Patrick Waltz (here billed as Philip Shawn) is a young man awaiting execution on death row. Though of course he protests his innocence, there's not much news there. But it so happens that he'll be the first consumer of the anonymous state's newly-installed electric chair (replacing the old-fashioned, and possibly more humane, garrotte). This shift of lethal mediums has the warden and the executioner and the staff all a-twitter, leaving them little time or empathy for the human side of the story – which also involves the condemned man's girlfriend (Sally Parr), who has been brought to the prison but whom he refuses to see.

The newfangled hot seat has drawn a large cadre of newspaper reporters (Percy Helton is but one of the many noir stalwarts among them), gathered at Pops' Place. This is a last-ditch bus depot/greasy spoon/post office/truck stop and motel out in the sticks, where they wait for a jitney to transport them to the prison. And here's where the movie takes its most arresting turn. In dialogue that might almost have been lifted from a Eugene O'Neill reject, the ink-stained wretches start reminiscing and speculating, cumulatively telling the story of the convict whose death they're shortly to witness – and other stories which start to intersect with it.

The plot moves slowly, as piece after piece drops into place. Sloane (who also wrote the script) intercuts between the terrified young man awaiting his quietus and these old hacks who think they've seen it all (they haven't). Meanwhile, a trusty from the prison comes to collect the mail, and spots a wanted poster on the bulletin board which sets him to thinking, too....

Basically, The Sun Sets At Dawn remains little more than another death-row beat-the-clock thriller. The plot, which accommodates more than a twist or two in a 71-minute running time, is admittedly contrived, but Sloane has the decency (and wit) to justify his every contrivance. And even if its turnings leave you unimpressed, you'll have to admit that the movie's dialogue-free opening, at night at Pops' Place, is as bleak and transfixing as just about anything in the noir cycle (shoestring-budget division). The Sun Sets At Dawn proves itself a keeper, and a fitting memorial to the unsung Sloane.

Ain't No Sunshine Here

[bnwfilmbuff · 6/10 · 10 May 2017]

Offbeat dark drama concerning the hours before the execution of a young man protesting his innocence. Walter Reed gives a fine performance as the chaplain ministering to the man to be executed who gradually believes in his innocence. There is some unusual direction as the story moves back and forth from the young man protesting his situation in the cell to the newsmen holed up in a greasy spoon trying to substantiate his guilt. Noir regulars Percy Helton, King Donovan and Charles Arnt make up some of he newsmen. No doubt this is somewhat of a protest film against capital punishment but it never overplays this angle. There are some good plot twists that makes the movie more interesting. The acting is uniformly good and the film is a worthwhile viewing if you can wade through the depressing subject matter.

Low Budget And Quirky Suspenser.

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 29 November 2012]

The production has no bankable stars and a low budget. There are less than half a dozen sets, and some of the actors turn in performances that might have come straight out of a high school play, maybe "Our Town," in East Orange, New Jersey. The plot takes us beyond he level of implausibility into the upper reaches of Zen.

Yet, despite all this, the thing works pretty well. There is an element of "High Noon" in it as the clock ticks relentlessly towards the dawn execution of "the boy" in the state's new electric chair. And, as in "Front Page," a diverse group of reporters sit around in Pop's café and post office, waiting for the bus that will take them to the prison as witnesses, meanwhile playing gin rummy and trading wisecracks and insults. Pop's Place reminded me of "The Petrified Forest." There are frequent cuts to the cell in death row, where "the boy" -- he's a young man who has put several years in the army and worked as a reporter -- tells the Padre his tale of innocence and woe. Did he murder the guy in the unique fashion described? Six shots fired in such rapid succession that they sound like a machine gun? He claims not. The Padre believes him and promises that, if he's truly innocent, God will believe him.

I used to be an usher in the Yiddish theater and there was one scene in which a similarly innocent young man was strapped into the electric chair. The playwrights allowed Mama to enter the death room, fall to her knees, and sob onto her son's lap. There wasn't a dry eye in the house, although no one can even imagine such a thing happening. Except here, too, the boy's girl friend shows up at the prison and is taken into the warden's home to be comforted by the warden's wife, offered tea, a place to lie down, a quantum of sympathy. She doesn't actually get to weep on the condemned shoulder though.

You won't believe the resolution, so I'll skip it. I don't mean that you won't believe what happens on the screen. I mean you won't believe ME if I describe it. You'll think I'm lying to you. Come to think of it, that's a pretty filthy attitude. You don't even know me and yet you accuse me of being a liar? "The boy" (Philip Shawn) spends most of his time staring into space. The Padre is too handsome for a priest but at least he can act like a professional. The editing is clumsy enough for interpolated shots of them sitting silently together, both of them staring into the unknown. The cast has a number of faces that will be recognizable to fans of older movies. Howard St. John, as the warden, was the corrupt assistant of Broderick Crawford in "Born Yesterday." King Donovan was the guy who found the "blank body" on his pool table in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Percy Helton is probably recognizable too. He's the short reporter with the turned-up nose of some kind of rodent, like a prairie dog, and has a high, hoarse, clipped voice.

Despite the precariousness of the plot, it all more or less fits together. There is a nebulous logic in which belief and doubt merge into a strangely comforting concinnity. Try it, you'll like it.

That's Not What Dawn Means, But...

[boblipton · 7/10 · 19 March 2019]

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.

Have you seen the iron lady?Legs of steel,leather on her arms ....(Phil Ochs)

[ulicknormanowen · 7/10 · 8 May 2020]

"the sun sets at dawn" :what a beautiful but depressing title when you know that the daybreak means death!

A low-budget movie which is absorbing from start to finish ,reportedly based on a true event ;its treatment is off the beaten track :no flashback (which is all the more unsettling because we only have the condemned men ' s word), the scenes between the priest and him are intertwined with those of the reporters who tell their own version of the facts : one of them is moved,because it's his first execution ,but most of them are mainly eager to write the item ,the scoop which might enhance their mean career :most of them are indifferent ,some of them's attitude verges on celebration ,selfishness runs rampant ;there's something of Billy Wilder' s "the big carnival" aka "ace in the hole" here.

More movies come to mind;in Hitchcock's "the wrong man" the hero, played by Henry Fonda, prays in desperation ,and there's almost a "divine" intervention . In "the sun sets at dawn " the relationship between the priest and the condemned young man is admirable : "God knows the truth "; the moment when they test the new electric chair would be unbearable without the presence of the man of God ; it's also him who comforts the distraught girl and tells her to "remember the best" . In Clint Eastwood" 's true crime" ,an innocent black man is to be executed (lethal injection) ;the suspense is intense ,as in "the sun" : till the very last minute , one is not sure that the innocent will be saved ;in both movies , an almost "divine" intervention: a last minute witness in Eastwood's work, "the seventh crime" in Paul Sloane's.

The hero's suffering is entirely inhuman : not only he has to endure the tests in his cell ,but they also have to make two attempts because the new "iron lady" is not quite up to scratch yet.

But against all odds, the sun will rise.

Thus innocent blood was spared that day. (Bible ,DANIEL)

Stilted clunker has no excuses.

[st-shot · 3/10 · 10 June 2017]

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.

Excessively mawkish and melodramatic

[howardmorley · 5/10 · 9 January 2017]

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.

A very effective anti-capital punishment B-movie.

[planktonrules · 8/10 · 9 August 2014]

"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 Sun Sets at Dawn - Rooting for the Execution

[arthur_tafero · 3/10 · 5 December 2023]

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.

A Silent Film Set in 1950

[Catherine-Yronwode · 8/10 · 8 December 2019]

This is an unusual film in many ways, but most striking to me is that the director, Paul Sloane, a silent film auteur who had made the transition to sound and then inexplicably vanished from the industry for more than a decade, suddenly reappeared to write and direct what is essentially a silent movie (with conventional 1950-era sound), starring quite a cast of silent era actors.

Almost everything in this movie is antique -- the large cast of older men as reporters, the elderly "Pops" who runs the diner, the frozen-in-amber look of the sets for the warden's home and his office in the prison -- and this elegiac effect is heightened by the continual references to times gone by and the display of worn-out and bypassed items, such as the out-of-date Post Office "Wanted" posters that Pops has learned to love. Even the direction of the unknown young "Girl" is reminiscent of Murnau's direction of Janet Gaynor in 1927's "Sunrise."

If you look up the bios of the actors, you will see that at least half of them were over 50 and some were in their late 60s. Did Paul Sloane just come out of hibernation, hire all of his old colleagues and have one last go at it? I don' think we will ever know -- but for whatever reason he did it, the film is very satisfying if you think of it as a "silent film with sound."

I rated it an 8, which i rarely do for "B" films, because although it was filmed with minimal sets and although i tend to downgrade films that feature boyishly handsome priests called "Padre," (sorry, just a quirk of mine), this movie is unique, like a carton of mint-condition New-Old-Stock porcelain dolls found in the sealed-off back room of a diner on a sound stage somewhere in Post-War Los Angeles.

Don't be afraid to try it. Just love it for what it is.