Somewhere in the Night (1946): Remembering Forgotten Noir
Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1946 amnesia noir deserves another look.
Despite its status as a genre movie, Somewhere in the Night is one of the first films in the classic Film Noir period to incorporate psychoanalytic theory into its character profiles.
On the surface, George Taylor’s story is about amnesia. But Taylor’s Larry Cravat persona also represents his shadow self, the part of our subconscious mind that represses our darkest thoughts and desires.
This complexity deepens when we consider what the film is saying about the nation’s efforts to move on from the catastrophe of World War Two. In choosing to incorporate psychoanalytic theory in this manner, Somewhere in the Night suggests that America has created its own “national shadow self,” a repression of its collective grief following a horrific global war.
