Somewhere in the Night

George Taylor comes back from the war with no memory. He does not know who he is, and has a few objects and a letter. Tracing his identity in Los Angeles, he arrives at a murder committed three years earlier and two million missing dollars. The trouble is that the more he investigates his past, the less likeable the man he finds turns out to be. This is an early directing credit for Joseph L. Mankiewicz. Amnesia was a common noir device, but its function here is different: Taylor is chasing his own past as well as a culprit, and is afraid of what he will find. The film puts that fear into the dialogue, and Mankiewicz's later taste for sharp lines is already audible. John Hodiak leads with Nancy Guild opposite him, and Lloyd Nolan and Richard Conte fill out the cast. Who it's for: Viewers who like 1940s noir and mysteries built on identity and memory. Who it's not for: The plot is convoluted and hard to follow in places, and the lead does not stay with you the way the genre's bigger stars do.