Somewhere in the Night (1946)

After throwing himself on a grenade, a soldier (John Hodiak) in World War II suffers from amnesia. He’s probably called George Taylor, or so the facts suggest. He’s not too keen on finding out more about himself, and even hides his condition from the Army, because he has found a letter among his belongings that suggests he might not be the nicest of guys.

Yet when the opportunity arises to be released to his apparently native Los Angeles, he still grasps it. Once there, the shell-shocked George even learns he might have had an actual friend by the name of Larry Cravat. Looking for something, anything to hold onto, George decides to find Larry. What follows is a series of encounters with the night people of LA, various attacks on his life, and even more questions concerning his own former habits and personality. Bar chanteuse Christy Smith (Nancy Guild) appears quite smitten by George, so things aren’t all bad, confusing and traumatic, even though our protagonist’s face has the sweaty Hollywood glow of stress on his face most of the time.

In many regards, Somewhere in the Night is a bit of a best of collection of the tropes later decades decided would make up the character of the noir as a genre. As many a noir, it isn’t an orderly constructed mystery, it hardly even is a laissez faire one, but rather a film that puts its audience very much into the same position as its protagonist has stepped into: utter confusion about his self and the world surrounding him, chasing shadows while encountering characters – all played by brilliant character actors – whose importance to his own questions or his life he can neither grasp nor understand for much of the film’s running time.

This sense of dislocation and confusion isn’t a weakness of writer/director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s film, however, but its point. If ever there was a film about existentialist angst and a world that has broken down so much, a person even has to doubt their own identity and character, this one is it. As a portrayal of this, Somewhere in the Night is flawless.

Even George’s encounters with people who will turn out to have very little to do with his problems have a point in this regard, as Somewhere in the Night shows most of these characters to be just as much in the dark about the world, the plot and their roles in it as he is. Even the film’s main villain knows only parts of what is actually going on, and about these, he isn’t exactly right. Confusion and doubt are just the natural state of the film’s world.

All of this gives Somewhere the quality of an anxiety driven dream even before Mankiewicz and DP Norbert Brodine drench much of it in shadows not so much of night but of our ideal of night.

The dialogue wavers between sharp, clever and sarcastic quips and bouts of depression and existentialist doubt – all of which is about as naturalistic as a Shakespeare monologue, and therefore perfectly fitting to the artificial depths of the noir.

Somehow – perhaps because Hodiak looks and feels like a guy who really deserves a break, and Guild projects a genuine kind of  goodness that makes one root for the guy she goes out of her way to protect – I’m not even annoyed about Somewhere in the Night’s happy end, usually  a small irritant in noirs for me. Nightmares do turn into more pleasant dreams from time to time, after all.

Three Films Make A Post: The flesh is weak. Wax is forever.

Death Race 2050 (2017): G.J. Echternkamp’s film isn’t another sequel to the direct-to-video films based on the idea - minus the satire and the humour - of the Roger Corman-produced Death Race 2000 but a Roger-Corman produced remake of the original. That means broad, crude and sometimes funny satire is back in again, the production design is cheap yet insane, and Malcolm McDowell is the chairman of the United Corporations of America and looking like he’s having fun hamming it up and talking nonsense.

I for one welcome the return of weirdness, though I still prefer the original movie with its rather more pointed satire and its much superior stunt work. However compared with the usually deplorable quality of contemporary Corman productions, this one works out rather well by being mostly entertaining and more often than not even funny.

Klute (1971): The first film in what is sometimes known as director Alan J. Pakula’s paranoia trilogy (the other films being The Parallax View and All the President’s Men) is a giallo plot treated through the lens of US 70s hyperrealism, leading to a film that’s much more interested in the female main character’s Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda doing a brilliant job) psychology than it is in its murder mystery or its titular character (Donald Sutherland working wonderfully as a foil for Fonda to work with/against), mostly using said mystery to further emphasise thematic connections concerning trust and self-knowledge and 70s big city malaise in  the mystery and in Bree’s life. In the case of Klute, this isn’t a criticism, mind you, for Pakula’s direction and Fonda’s acting really come together to form something special and harrowing. Plus, the suspense scenes that are there are a rather brilliant bonus. I could have gone without the scenes between Bree and her psychiatrist which only tell the audience directly what the acting has made clear all along but then I’ve never been much of a fan of therapy scenes in movies.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muire (1947): This somewhat well-known (he wrote ironically) romance with a ghost between Gene Tierney (beautiful, alive) and Rex Harrison (dead, and supposedly a crusty sea bear which does use up a lot of my ability to ignore the improbable, much more so than his being a ghost) is ahead of most horror films of its time by indeed featuring a real ghost. As directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (not showing much of the talkiness classic movie buffs seem to either love or loath him for), it’s a highly effective romance I’d call a tear-jerker if that wasn’t making light of its delicate sensibilities. It’s the sort of film classic Hollywood was excellent at, an escapist tale of beautiful people and heightened emotions that looks and feels effortlessly luxurious.


In fact, the film’s emotionally so convincing I can hardly bring myself to be annoyed by its dubious idea of waiting one’s whole life away for a love one doesn’t even remember as the height of romance. Having to buy George Sanders as really hot stuff still confuses the heck out of this heterosexual guy, though.