Product Description

George Taylor returns from the WWII with amnesia. Back home in os Angeles, he tries to track down his old identity, stumbling into a 3-year old murder case and a hunt for a missing $2 million.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27283 in DVD
• Brand: Twentieth Century Fox
• Released on: 2005-09-06
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, Subtitled, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 110 minutes

Amazon.com
"Somewhere in the Night" is an exemplary title for a film noir, and the shellshocked pilgrimage of an amnesiac WWII veteran through an L.A. shadow-zone of hotels, bars, steam baths, sanitariums, and creepy private dwellings casts an uncanny spell. The plot is so byzantine, and the interlayering of the banal with the bizarre so pervasive, we may occasionally feel we've wandered into a Raul Ruiz mindgame in the guise of a '40s mystery-melodrama. The situation is primal: a man searching for his own identity, dreading what that identity will prove to be, yet so monastically dedicated to his mission that he won't reveal his dilemma to anyone even when it might ease his quest.

The script is shot through with contradictions and improbabilities, though these loom more glaring in retrospect than during the viewing. In his sophomore directorial outing, Joseph L. Mankiewicz--who would soon evolve into a multiple-Oscar-winner (Letter to Three Wives, All About Eve)--occasionally bungles action setups that any journeyman director could have handled in mid-yawn. But he¹s also written some choice dialogue and slivered some engaging business into the proceedings--especially for Lloyd Nolan as a drugstore-philosopher homicide cop, and German-Expressionist refugee Fritz Kortner (Pandora's Box), whose arias of Continental fatalism and duplicity are sheer delight. The always-assured Richard Conte is slick as an affable nightclub operator, and there are fine bits by a host of unbilled character players (Whit Bissell, Henry "Harry" Morgan, Jeff Corey, Houseley Stevenson). But Hodiak makes a charismatically challenged leading man, and a better actress than neophyte Nancy Guild ("rhymes with wild!") would have found it tough to bring off the combination of worldliness and devotion required of the nightclub chanteuse who offers him aid and comfort. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews

Little mystery pours on the fun
Appealing mystery tells the story of a World War II vet (John Hodiak) who suffers a terrible injury somewhere in the Pacific theater of operations, gains a new, surgically reconstructed face and loses his memory. Will he, somewhere in the night, find out who he really is?

Okay, let me amend and adjust that endorsement. I didn't recognize John Hodiak at all, although author Eddie Muller tells us he was a fairly well established star in the mid-40s on Muller's entertaining and informative commentary track. A quick internet search of his name disgorged a number of movies I've seen that Hodiak has been in, including a couple I like a lot. Hodiak plays a weary soldier in the good Battle of the Bulge movie `Battleground,' and he's one of the washed aboard survivors in Alfred Hitchcock's `Lifeboat.' Hodiak, about 30 when SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT was made was square shouldered, jut jawed, and seemed to favor a trim Clark Gable moustache. In appearance he was something of a cross between Don Ameche and Martin Landau, I guess, with a voice that reminded me of George Raft. I'm writing this in detail because, if this is Hodiak laying it out as a lead star, I'm certain to disremember him the next time around. SITN is future Oscar-winning director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's first feature, so maybe that explains why he allowed his male lead to play it so... tense for the duration. It doesn't help much that Mankiewicz cast 19-year-old newcomer Nancy Guild opposite Hodiak as the female lead. Hodiak, stiff as shoe leather, doesn't have nearly enough in his own cache of charisma to wipe the deer-in-the-headlights look off Guild's face, much less pump a cubic ounce of air into a scene. Confirming a couple of mistily formed suspicions, Muller tells us Guild was hired by Fox to be their Lauren Bacall. Doe-eyed sultresses were big back then, at least Bacall was, and Guild was certainly pretty enough to roll the dice on. Unfortunately she's more animated in her publicity stills than she is when the cameras are rolling, the shadows looming and the cigarette smoke curling. Guild's scenes alone with Hodiak are about as exciting as watching two people read a telephone directory to each other.

The leads are pretty awful and the plot, after the army medic unwraps the bandages from Hodiak's reconstructed face, is serpentine and confusing as heck. But the dialogue is snappy, Mankiewicz was a great writer, and the supporting cast is simply wonderful. Austrian actor Fritz Kortner plays an unscrupulous fortune-teller named Anzelmo and steals every scene he's in. Of course, he's not in any scenes with Lloyd Nolan, who plays a wise-cracking police detective and steals every scene he's in. Throw the always reliable Richard Conte into the mix as a night club owner, plus Harry Morgan, Margo Woode (if Conte and Woode had been cast in the leads this one would have been a certified classic,) Sheldon Leonard, et alia, and you have an incredibly strong and entertaining line-up. If SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT succeeds, and it does, it's because of the great script and over-competent supporting cast. Hodiak is stiff and a little detached, while poor Nancy Guild... well, as Muller says somewhere, she does try awfully hard. The plot's impossible to follow, the dialogue sparkles, and Kortner, Nolan, Conte, and the rest more than make up for the weak leads. A reasonably strong recommendation for this enjoyable flick.

Underrated, unusual, and lots of fun
An interesting, off-the-beaten-track film noir about an amnesiac soldier, recently discharged from the Marines, who returns to civilian life to rediscover his own past. Actor John Hodiak (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Val Kilmer...) plays his role with a sleepy-yet-cool reserve -- for a guy who thinks he's just an average joe, he sure seems to handle himself well when things start getting weird and dangerous in his old hometown of LA. Lee Strasberg (later of the Actor's Studio) delivers a compelling though flawed script... The first half of the film has an odd, stylish charm -- the flip, tough-guy rhetoric of the genre is tempered with a hefty dose of absurdism and playfulness. There are some great sequences and fun, zippy dialogue, although the prologue is far superior to the action part of the film. The second half lumbers along, and while it becomes clumsy, it's still entertaining and definitely a notch above many B-grade efforts of the same era. One particular treat is an extended role for Lloyd Nolan, who plays a too-cool, insouciant police detective -- his introduction is a real hoot, where he effortlessly steals the scene and leaves the audience wanting more... Lots more. You might not have heard of this film before -- I sure hadn't -- but it's definitely worth checking out!

Nonsensical Plot. Mediocre Dialogue. But Still a Satisfying Film Noir.
"Somewhere in the Night" is a film noir that was released, appropriately, in June 1946, shortly after World War II ended. Its protagonist is a recently discharged veteran returning home. Not surprisingly, instead of a placid, welcoming environment, he comes home to confusion, violence, and fear. George Taylor (John Hodiak) was injured when a grenade exploded, breaking his jaw and relieving him of his memory. Lying in veterans' hospitals with his jaw wired shut, unable to speak, George passes the time wondering who he is. After recuperating, he returns to his supposed home town Los Angeles in an embittered state of mind. Searching for clues to his identity, he retrieves a briefcase he left in storage 3 years ago. In it, he finds a letter stating that $5,000 was deposited in George Taylor's bank account by a Mr. Larry Cravat. George sets out to find Mr. Cravat, the only person who might be able to shed some light on his identity. But inquiries about Cravat only get him beaten, threatened, and suspected of murder. Dumped on the doorstep of pretty young nightclub singer Christy Smith (Nancy Guild), George confides in her. Christy enlists the assistance of her boss Mel Phillips (Richard Conte) and Police Detective Kendall (Lloyd Nolan) to help George find Larry Cravat and his own identity.

You would rack up quite a score counting the conventions of the noir style and themes present in this "Somewhere in the Night". But as foreboding as it may be at times, this film doesn't take itself very seriously. Director Joseph Mankiewicz has included some joking references to the dark crime films from which "Somewhere in the Night" takes its queues. There is an ongoing joke about detectives in movies always keeping their hats on, because Det. Kendall takes his off as social custom requires. And a vampy, villainous woman makes a reference to killing her colleague for "double indemnity", apparently a reference to the 1944 film "Double Indemnity". It might not be a coincidence that the character who delivers the line is named Phyllis (Margo Woode). Still, "Somewhere in the Night" is dark when it needs to be, incorporating themes of identity confusion, paranoia, persecution, and isolation into a detective story and romance. Nancy Guild makes her silver screen debut as sweet-but-smart Christy Smith, who brings logic and a level head to George's panic and frustration. "Somewhere in the Night" isn't a sophisticated film noir, but it's satisfying.

The DVD (20th Century Fox 2005): There is a theatrical trailer (2 min) and an audio commentary by film noir historian Eddie Muller. Muller discusses the film's amnesia, detective, and paranoia themes, the very recognizable supporting cast, the coincidences that move the plot along, and a variety of other trivia. It's a worthwhile commentary, but I'm not sure that Muller likes this film very much. I get the impression that he finds it too cliched. But it wasn't so cliched in 1946. Subtitles for the film are available in English and Spanish.