Somewhere in the Night (Fox Film Noir)
by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
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Actor: John Hodiak, Josephine Hutchinson, Lloyd Nolan, Nancy Guild, Richard ConteDirector: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Brand: Fox
Writer: Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Producer: Anderson Lawler
Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck
Writer: Howard Dimsdale
Writer: Lee Strasberg
Writer: Marvin Borowsky
Writer: W. Somerset Maugham
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, Dubbed, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 110 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-09-06
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
DVD Reviews of Somewhere in the Night (Fox Film Noir)
DVD Review: Mankiewicz Embodies Film Noir in Excellent Amnesiac Thriller...
Summary: 4 Stars
The predicament with amnesia, besides the obvious loss of memory, is the confusion and disorientation that the individuals experience while trying to get a grasp with reality. A simple direction might be more impossible than the most complex of riddles, as there is no coherent foundation to lean on in regards to previous experiences. Names, locations, and knowledge are only foggy symbolical representations of the unknown while only adding more bewilderment within the individual. Thus, amnesia presents a terrific opportunity to create film noir, as the loss of cognitive processes induces an ominous and mysterious atmosphere that does not let its grip go of the audience. Somewhere in the Night offers such an experience where a man drifts out of hazy unconsciousness to find himself lost in his own existence.
An angled rear shot of a man's head and an upside-down IV-bottle on which the words "Normal Human Plasma, Dried" fade in after the appearance of director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's name. Symbolically, the shot suggests immediately that something is wrong, as the inverted bottle is an icon for hospitalization and illness. Furthermore, the overturned text of the bottle hints toward the notion of a puzzled existence of a normal human being. Thanks to Mankiewicz's inspiring direction the film's first shot facilitates mind provoking suspense, as the camera slowly pans to the left displaying a small military hospital tent with some severely injured and a disheartened man covering his face in his hands. An unpromising future arises within this initial scene where death, injury, and hopelessness metaphorically present itself through the bleak future that many injured soldiers faced in military hospitals. It is clear that Mankiewicz understands the film noir spirit, as he offers such a meticulously planned first scene that sets the mood for the rest of the film.
After the pan the camera smoothly focuses in on a man who wakes up out of his injury-induced sleep discovering that he cannot move his mouth, or remember who he is, while other than people address him as George Taylor. He has no other choice than to assume that he is George Taylor (John Hodiak), as he recovers from his severe injuries at the final stage of the war. He becomes a civilian shortly after the end of the war, but he has very few clues about his identity other than his name. The lack of concrete evidence is unnerving and troubling to him, as it only makes him more suspicious about himself and whom he can trust. In addition, it is even more bewildering that he has a hard time uncovering the truth about his own identity. The only thing that is certain with his situation is that something is wrong when he begins to investigate himself. The first clue that he follows only adds to the perplexity of his situation when he finds another clue in a gun, a bank account with $5,000 (at the time it was a large amount of money), and a name.
Somewhere in the Night cleverly applies the concept of amnesia in a well-made film noir experience with a vague and ominously pensive mood even though the story might seem a little implausible. The camerawork and framing of several scenes augment the doomed atmosphere, as the protagonist seeks the truth. George's search keeps the audience guessing, but never completely sure about what has happened in the past, as he exposes new hints of his identity. Not only does Mankiewicz capture the tone of film noir through George, he embodies the theme of noir in an utterly exceptional manner. Every aspect of the film raises dubiousness: the characters, the hero, the plot, mise-en-scene, and the location of the film. There is nothing left to chance, as Mankiewicz provides a truly extraordinary cinematic experience that offers amusement, suspense, and contemplation.
Description of Somewhere in the Night (Fox Film Noir)
SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT - DVD Movie"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 hešs 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
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