“Do you
know what it’s like to be alone in the world? A billion people, every one of
them a stranger”
One of the earliest employments in
film noir of amnesia as a metaphor, Mankiewicz’s second feature centres on a veteran
reconstructing his life after the trauma of war. George Taylor – if indeed he
is George Taylor – lost his memory in a grenade blast. The only clues to his
identity are a poisonous letter from an anonymous old flame and a
three-year-old note from a friend, one Larry Cravat, promising him $5,000. His search
for Cravat takes in classic noir habitats – basement bars, seedy apartments, clammy
docks – and turns up a murder rap and a fortune in Nazi loot.
“The themes surrounding the
shell-shocked GI… can be read as a comprehensive critique of urban society both
before and after the war,” writes Nicholas Christopher in his book named after
this film.[1]
That may be overstating it as far as Somewhere
in the Night is concerned, but it captures splendidly what Christopher
calls the veteran’s “sense of displacement, rejection, and cynicism as he tries
to re-enter American society”. Taylor is pushed to the brink of madness as he
attempts to piece his life together. Nobody recollects – or will admit to – meeting
him before the war, except for one desperately lonely woman (a poignant cameo
by Josephine Hutchinson), who then admits she was lying; his paranoia about
every passing stranger becomes almost pathological – then again, this is the
kind of noir in which passing strangers do indeed have sinister purposes; and
the elusive Cravat becomes a kind of Harry Lime figure, wanted by both the
police and sundry underworld schemers, his reputation darkening as ugly truths
emerge.
Hodiak is a rather dour actor, but
he injects Taylor with just the right dose of nervous tension, of increasing
pertubation. (The character’s past life as a private detective makes him even
more archetypal for noir.) Nancy Guild is adequate as the torch singer who aids
him in his quest, but struggles to give substance to an admittedly underwritten
role. Thankfully, the script is flush with vivid supporting roles, from Fritz
Kortner’s sham spiritualist and Richard Conte’s smooth-yet-shady bar owner, to Lloyd
Nolan’s good-humoured policeman, who resents the stereotypes perpetuated by
“movie cops”, particularly when it comes to the wearing of hats. Some of the
dialogue is diamond sharp.
While the combination of
subjective camera and blurred images in the opening sequence achieves the
required disorienting effect, Mankiewicz’s direction in general errs on the
cautious side. (Norbert Brodine’s excellent lighting takes the lead in setting
the atmosphere, on a mixture of studio sets and real locations.) If the film is
not as exciting visually as others of its ilk, it measures up in thematic
terms. Taylor’s pursuit of answers, in course of which he effectively chases
his own shadow, entails the same physical and psychological pain – the equivalent
rite of passage – endured by all noir protagonists compelled to blow the dust
off the past.
Kevin Grant
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