- A Hitchcock film as directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Somewhere in the Night delivers an immensely enjoyable variation on the classic amnesia plot. The protagonist, George Taylor (John Hodiak), was injured by a grenade in the war and can't remember who he is. The only clues to his identity are his name, a promissory note from his presumed friend Larry Cravat, and some hate mail from an unremembered former lover. When George starts asking around about Cravat, however, he gets some surprising reactions. A bank teller immediately notifies his manager. The steam bath operator brushes him off and places a phone call. A bartender tips off some goons who appear to have anticipated Taylor's arrival. Apparently this Cravat fellow must have gotten himself into a spot of trouble.
- While fleeing from said goons, Taylor bumps into a sympathetic lounge singer named Christy Smith (Nancy Guild) who introduces him to her boss, Mel Phillips (Richard Conte). A slick operator, Phillips offers his abundant business connections to help Taylor as a favor to Christy. They set up a lunch meeting with Police Lieutenant Kendall (Lloyd Nolan), whose disarming mannerisms conceal a shrewd mind. (More than once, I found myself wondering whether Kendall's rambling mix of charming asides and astute observations planted seeds for a future TV detective named Columbo.) As helpful as his new friends try to be, however, they can't keep Taylor out of the hands of a villain named Anzelmo (Fritz Kortner) and his dangerous associates (Margo Woode, Sheldon Leonard, Lou Nova). Oddly enough, even the film's badguys don't seem to know much about Larry Cravat.
- To really appreciate Somewhere in the Night, you have to keep Hitchcock's imaginary audience of "Implausibles" at bay by meeting the film halfway on multiple plot points. For one thing, three different characters -- a sanitarium inmate named Conroy (Houseley Stevens), Conroy's wonderfully weird daughter (Josephine Hutchinson), and Taylor himself -- are affected by severe memory problems. Moreover, three characters in the film are involved in hit-and-run car accidents as pedestrians. Fortunately, Hodiak, Conte, and Nolan are all compelling enough to sell these absurd details, even though Guild fails to live up to her publicist's promise that "Guild rhymes with wild!" Sure, the film would have been better with Hitchcock at the helm, but no audience would have believed that Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart could forget who they were.
- Featuring a strangely muscular Harry Morgan as the steam bath operator.
