Somewhere in the Night

One of the better and better-funded amnesia noirs, Joseph Mankiewicz’s Somewhere in the Night stars John Hodiak as a self-ignorant war veteran who’s adopted the name George Taylor and soon learns he’s the link to an important man named Larry Cravat. The plot is dense and elliptical, but it’s hard not to interpret the film as an extended metaphor for postwar male fatigue (the police lieutenant cites a “boom in postwar homicides.”) To rewind Taylor’s life, he and Lt. Donald Kendall (Lloyd Nolan) follow a trail of inquiries from steam baths to bars to nightclub dressing rooms to psychiatric hospitals (an extended sequence of sustained tension and beauty) to Christian homeless shelters. Aside from a couple of goofy moments, like the odd scream Elizabeth (Josephine Hutchinson) ejaculates to warn Taylor of an approaching truck, Mankiewicz makes the most of beautiful set design, most notably the scene under the dock replete with high-contrast lighting and babbling water on the soundtrack. As Christy Smith, Nancy Guild approximates Ella Raines in appearance but not in acting ability, while Hodiak performs convincingly when not appearing to sniff the air. More importantly, the film is often visually gorgeous in a way that enhances the narrative, like the camera’s point of view through Taylor’s bandaged eyes in the military hospital, the studio streets with perfect moonlight sheen on cars, and the half-empty mental hospital where Conroy has been stabbed in his bed.