Somewhere in the Night
Time Out says
Hodiak as a marine blown up at Okinawa who returns to Los Angeles armed only with a name that means nothing to him and a letter from a girl, now dead, who hated him. Out of this familiar premise, Mankiewicz has fashioned a classic film noir account of the amnesiac who suspects he isn't going to like rediscovering the man he once was. His odyssey in quest of himself leads through a long dark night with murder and a missing $2 million dollars at the end of it, peopled along the way by the lost and the lonely, the suave and the sinister (wonderful supporting performances) and taking in a series of suitably clammy settings (waterfront fortune-telling parlour, mission hall, sanatorium for the insane). Mankiewicz's superb control of a complex plot (as both writer and director) takes him into at least one outstanding set piece: an elaborate nightclub sequence in which Hodiak questions a bartender, the latter casually tips off two hoods, a bowl of pretzels is slipped down the bar to identify the target, and just as something is about to explode, the lights dim as the band strikes up a new number...
Details
Release details
Duration:
110 mins
Cast and crew
Director:
Joseph L Mankiewicz
Screenwriter:
Howard Dimsdale, Joseph L Mankiewicz, Lee Strasberg
Cast:
John Hodiak
Nancy Guild
Lloyd Nolan
Richard Conte
Josephine Hutchinson
Fritz Kortner
Margo Woode
Sheldon Leonard
John Russell
Houseley Stevenson
Nancy Guild
Lloyd Nolan
Richard Conte
Josephine Hutchinson
Fritz Kortner
Margo Woode
Sheldon Leonard
John Russell
Houseley Stevenson