This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

A soldier, all bandaged up, wakes up in an army hospital in the war and remembers nothing. All he can do is to soliloquize. His wallet has been miraculously saved from the grenade devastation that all but killed him, which contains a weird letter from someone condemning him with all her hate. That's the only cue he has to his life and identity.It's a difficult beginning to start with, but the soldier is returned to life and to Los Angeles, where he starts digging for his past, groping his way in the total darkness of a mystery that only grows worse for each new clue that turns up. A singing lady takes care of him and bandages him up when he gets beaten up by hoodlums for no known reason, and there are more and more people like that, trying to get what he knows and the more eagerly so for the fact that he knows nothing.All amnesia films are usually extremely interesting and good, "Random Harvest" is the best example of all, but here the hero has no great past and has never been in any position but is just a common man who had the misfortune to get mixed up with accidents and intrigues beyond his control. At first you feel disappointed with the film, as nothing seems to resolve the mysteries but only to complicate them. Like the man himself you err in a labyrinth of grotesque absurdity, and every helper seems only to make it worse - until he meets an old man in a mental hospital, and then you have already passed way beyond half of the film.What follows though is completely rewarding. The miracle happens that everything in this inextricable mystery actually is resolved and explained, and an impossible abyss of illogical absurdity turns the other way around in a marvel of a sudden revelation, which definitely saves the film and turns it from disaster to glory.All Joe Mankiewicz's films display a high class stylishness of almost an aristocratic touch, which makes them all enjoyable, and this weird odyssey through a nightmare of disorientation is no exception. The actors are also convincing enough, while Richard Conte is the only real character player. This was Mankiewicz's second film on his way up to supreme stardom of directors, and he still had 20 more years to go of reliably outstanding films.

Before Joe Mankiewicz's career went into high gear with back to back Oscars for A Letter To Three Wives and All About Eve, he did this crackerjack noir film about a war veteran with amnesia and a past he might not really want to remember. Borrowing heavily from The Maltese Falcon, Somewhere In The Night instead of a legendary bird has a very real and tangible two million dollars of smuggled Nazi loot that a Los Angeles private eye was handling and got lost.In the meantime on the strength of a letter written to him while in the service an amnesiac war veteran comes searching for his past in Los Angeles and finds himself in a lot of trouble he can't decipher. John Hodiak plays the troubled veteran and the only friend he has is nightclub singer Nancy Guild who sings in Richard Conte's nightclub.Hodiak sad to say is a pretty forgotten actor today. He came along during the war years and when folks like Gable and Taylor returned from the service he was kind of an MGM spare tire. I'm sure Darryl Zanuck got him on the cheap for this film at 20th Century Fox. Still Hodiak had an everyman appeal that resonated well with audiences. A shame he died so young of a heart attack, I believe it was a heart murmur that kept him out of the Armed Services in World War II.I wish we had seen a little more of Lloyd Nolan playing a laconic police detective. There's a man who never gave a bad performance even in mediocre films.Although I had it right partially in terms of a solution, Somewhere In The Night will still yield a few surprises to some in the viewing audience. And that's the mark of a good film.

George Taylor wakes up in a military hospital, with no memory of who he is or how he got there. His discharge papers point him to an address and he follows the lead looking to figure out his past. The path leads him into a dangerous world of dames and hoodlums with a three-year old murder and a missing fortune at the core of the mystery. This is the basic plot and if offered me some interest; OK the amnesia device is not the most original but it is how it is used that matters and this plot sounded like it would tough, pacey and engaging. Sadly it doesn't totally manage to make it all work even if at times it is pretty good.The biggest problem for me is the length and the pacing of the delivery; it is longer than it can sustain and the plot unfurls in a way that is almost too slow and deliberate. The slow pace means that urgency is lost but more damagingly is that it gives you plenty of time to think – so rather than being dragged along by the developments and thrilling plot, the viewer tends to be looking ahead. This is damaging partly because it prevented me getting into the film as much as I would have liked, but also because it means I was thinking about where it was going and, too early in the film, I was able to be pretty sure of the twists that were coming – a good hour before the film actually got there. At its heart this story is still good but it needed to be tougher and breathless in its pace so that the viewer was never allowed to be looking ahead of it. It is still OK for what it is, but the pace damages it.The direction also seems pretty stiff and slow. Static shots, stiff framing and very little motion within the shots means that it adds to the feeling of the film being unnecessarily slow. The cast match this approach somewhat. Hodiak is too stiff and unnatural and his lack of fear and panic is a negative to his performance; he is likable as the lead but there was a lack of heart there. I liked Hutchinson alongside him, even though I felt the film gave her character too much time, adding to the slowing effect. Conte surprised me by being quite dull here, although he had a nice presence the film never uses him enough.Overall Somewhere in the Night has a good plot but it never delivers it in a way that plays to its strengths. The film runs too long and the scenes are delivered at a patience and slow pace that really doesn't suit what it should be doing. This hurts the delivery, robs the plot of urgency and exposes the plot developments to scrutiny which more or less allows the viewer to spoiler the ending for themselves about a hour before the film gets there. Solid film but way too slow.

John Hodiak stars in this piece of Film-Noir. George Taylor(Hodiak)is a bitter WWII veteran Marine with amnesia. He returns to Los Angeles with hopes of rediscovering his identity. He has only two clues linked to his past: a vicious letter of woe from a woman that hates him and another mysterious note from a "Larry Cravat". George in search of Cravat becomes involved with a winsome lounge singer(Nancy Guild)and her boss(Richard Conte). Police investigator Kendall(Lloyd Nolan)informs the three that Cravat is wanted for murder and the robbery of two million dollars. But what is Taylor's connection? For all he knows, since thugs are chasing him...hell, he himself may be the mysterious Cravat.Director Joseph L. Mankiewicz co-writes the screenplay with Howard Dinsdale. Hodiak is a passive leading man, while the attractive Guild almost steals the movie from him. Nolan plays the copper with a dry humor. Also in the cast: Sheldon Leonard, Fritz Kortner and Lou Nova.