Amnesia. Always a promising premise. Protagonist wakes up in an unexpected place. Who am I? Where am I? Not the most original plot device (think "Random Harvest") but a good one. In this case, since it is a film noir, the protagonist awakes to a sordid affair of theft and murder. "Somewhere in the Night" (I take the title to indicate the night, or fog, of the hero's mind) is far better than the average noir. The characters are developed, not cardboard cut-outs. They hold your interest. The plot holds your attention through its twists and turns. And those twists are among the twistiest. We know from the beginning that the protagonist is innocent. It's not hard to guess well before the end who the villain will be. Once the dialogue in a noir starts insisting that someone is a sterling fellow it's a dead giveaway; he's the heavy. Still, Joseph Mankiewicz's deft direction and an excellent cast make it work.
It is majorly twisty. I found myself left with a dizzy feeling: wait a minute; what happened? does it make sense? let me think. George Taylor is Larry Cravat. I get it. We find that out near the end. That's the big twist. But it was obvious much earlier. George, as he still calls himself, has one clue to his identity. An unknown embittered woman had written him a cursing letter. He still has it. The writing is that of Christy's deceased friend Mary whom Larry Cravat, not George Taylor, had left at the altar. Obviously, she sent it to Larry Cravat. Q.E.D. Well, George is not observant. All the rest hinges on the fact that nobody can recognize Larry Cravat. Larry had been a private detective for years. He must have had dealings with the police. Yet the police cannot recognize him? He remains the suspect of an open murder case. Two men were at the scene of the crime. The police know that one was Larry Cravat. How? The eyewitness, Michael Conroy, must have provided them a description of a known individual. How else could investigators have identified him? Yet they do not recognize him when he returns? Then there's Phyllis. She actually has met Larry Cravat. Yet she is dumbfounded when he says "look; here I am." It can only make sense if we assume Larry's face underwent massive reconstructive surgery. That makes "Somewhere in the Night" a kissing cousin of Bogart's "Dark Passage" that came out the next year. (Houseley Stevenson, who plays the plastic surgeon in that one, shows up here as the demented Michael Conroy.) But in Bogart's case we are in no doubt that his appearance has drastically changed. Here that crucial fact is obscured. We do see Larry/George's hospitalized face heavily bandaged. But there's absolutely no talk of plastic surgery. Apart from one lightning-quick line near the end - "you know, my face got pushed around at Okinawa" - that puzzle-solver disappears. No, we didn't know that the face had been so indescribably "pushed around." It's a venerable Agatha Christie trick, withholding a key tidbit until the end. But it is rather unhelpful to the viewer who's struggling to pull the plot elements together.
Passing by those quibbles, one thing keeps it afloat, the acting. John Hodiak, as always, is solid ("Lifeboat" is one of my favorites). Nancy Guild does a good job with a role that seems to have been written for Lizabeth Scott. The great German actor Fritz Kortner puts a nice touch to a role that seems to have been written for Walter Slezak. Any film with Richard Conte is worth a watch, just for Richard Conte. Margo Woode as the floozy Phyllis stands out. She invests a standard role with a playful, half-mocking insouciance ("Oh. We're going to have repartee!"). She's a cut-rate femme fatale working for a second-rate con artist. She plays it perfectly. Her seduction, laced with farcical French flourishes ("just this and that and quelque chose"), has the smell of cheap perfume all about it, as it should. A marvelous crew of character actors helps out: Harry Morgan, Whit Bissell, Jeff Corey, Louis Mason. Sheldon Leonard does a semi-comic turn. One actress by herself and one scene make the whole film worth watching. Josephine Hutchinson had a tremendous career on stage. I cannot understand why she faded out of the movies. Perhaps the studios felt her presence was too risky, given her long, unapologetic lesbian romance with Eva la Gallienne. Or maybe she was just too good, impossible to type-cast. She gives a taste of what Hollywood passed up. Her one scene as the lonely, unloved Elizabeth Conroy is unforgettable.: "Dawns are always grey ... nights are black, and they're all empty." She does it simply, without affectation, without manufactured tears. In the end, hers is the one character who sticks in the mind. For a moment she makes us relax from the effort of following the labyrinthine plot and just applaud a great piece of acting. She makes us hope the character will come back for another scene. She makes us regret that it doesn't. Catch "Somewhere in the Night." It's worth it. Sit up and watch carefully when George or Larry by whatever name knocks on Elizabeth's door.
It is majorly twisty. I found myself left with a dizzy feeling: wait a minute; what happened? does it make sense? let me think. George Taylor is Larry Cravat. I get it. We find that out near the end. That's the big twist. But it was obvious much earlier. George, as he still calls himself, has one clue to his identity. An unknown embittered woman had written him a cursing letter. He still has it. The writing is that of Christy's deceased friend Mary whom Larry Cravat, not George Taylor, had left at the altar. Obviously, she sent it to Larry Cravat. Q.E.D. Well, George is not observant. All the rest hinges on the fact that nobody can recognize Larry Cravat. Larry had been a private detective for years. He must have had dealings with the police. Yet the police cannot recognize him? He remains the suspect of an open murder case. Two men were at the scene of the crime. The police know that one was Larry Cravat. How? The eyewitness, Michael Conroy, must have provided them a description of a known individual. How else could investigators have identified him? Yet they do not recognize him when he returns? Then there's Phyllis. She actually has met Larry Cravat. Yet she is dumbfounded when he says "look; here I am." It can only make sense if we assume Larry's face underwent massive reconstructive surgery. That makes "Somewhere in the Night" a kissing cousin of Bogart's "Dark Passage" that came out the next year. (Houseley Stevenson, who plays the plastic surgeon in that one, shows up here as the demented Michael Conroy.) But in Bogart's case we are in no doubt that his appearance has drastically changed. Here that crucial fact is obscured. We do see Larry/George's hospitalized face heavily bandaged. But there's absolutely no talk of plastic surgery. Apart from one lightning-quick line near the end - "you know, my face got pushed around at Okinawa" - that puzzle-solver disappears. No, we didn't know that the face had been so indescribably "pushed around." It's a venerable Agatha Christie trick, withholding a key tidbit until the end. But it is rather unhelpful to the viewer who's struggling to pull the plot elements together.
Passing by those quibbles, one thing keeps it afloat, the acting. John Hodiak, as always, is solid ("Lifeboat" is one of my favorites). Nancy Guild does a good job with a role that seems to have been written for Lizabeth Scott. The great German actor Fritz Kortner puts a nice touch to a role that seems to have been written for Walter Slezak. Any film with Richard Conte is worth a watch, just for Richard Conte. Margo Woode as the floozy Phyllis stands out. She invests a standard role with a playful, half-mocking insouciance ("Oh. We're going to have repartee!"). She's a cut-rate femme fatale working for a second-rate con artist. She plays it perfectly. Her seduction, laced with farcical French flourishes ("just this and that and quelque chose"), has the smell of cheap perfume all about it, as it should. A marvelous crew of character actors helps out: Harry Morgan, Whit Bissell, Jeff Corey, Louis Mason. Sheldon Leonard does a semi-comic turn. One actress by herself and one scene make the whole film worth watching. Josephine Hutchinson had a tremendous career on stage. I cannot understand why she faded out of the movies. Perhaps the studios felt her presence was too risky, given her long, unapologetic lesbian romance with Eva la Gallienne. Or maybe she was just too good, impossible to type-cast. She gives a taste of what Hollywood passed up. Her one scene as the lonely, unloved Elizabeth Conroy is unforgettable.: "Dawns are always grey ... nights are black, and they're all empty." She does it simply, without affectation, without manufactured tears. In the end, hers is the one character who sticks in the mind. For a moment she makes us relax from the effort of following the labyrinthine plot and just applaud a great piece of acting. She makes us hope the character will come back for another scene. She makes us regret that it doesn't. Catch "Somewhere in the Night." It's worth it. Sit up and watch carefully when George or Larry by whatever name knocks on Elizabeth's door.