This was directed and co-written by Joseph Mankiewicz. The cast includes John Hodiak and Richard Conte. Almost all the scenes are shot at night around Los Angeles and on the lot. It ought to be good but in fact it's no more than routine.
Let's recall John Huston's superb "The Maltese Falcon," in which the hero, Sam Spade, is hired to find a fabulously expensive statue of a bird whose trip through time has left a trail of dead bodies behind. Spade searches for the statue, discovering a little more about it each time he runs into the colorful and quirky figures that are associated with its pursuit. The Fat Man, the Gay Levantine, the dame with the past, the Gunsel -- they come crawling out of the woodwork, enough of them to make a minion. In the climactic scene they are all brought together in Spade's apartment, where all is explained. And they leave, only to have Spade ring up the police and clue them in, except for the Ambiguous Dame who is revealed as the chief villain.
I suspect "The Maltese Falcon" must have provided the model for this dark mystery, though enough cosmetic surgery has been performed to disguise the features of the original mold. Instead of the mysterious "black bird", John Hodiak, the man with no memory, pursues his own past and the two million dollars hidden somewhere within it. He runs into a gang of colorful and quirky characters. The Fat Man here is just a guy with a sinister face and a German accent and a classy phraseology. The Gunsel is a huge "tub of lard" who is barely able to string three sentences together. There's no Gay Levantine, but a few other characters make up for his absence. The Ambiguous Dame is split into her two constituents -- the louche broad who slings around French clichés and the honest, brave Nancy Guild who falls in love with Hodiak (and vice versa) two minutes after they meet. Hodiak is beaten up by the hoods, just as Spade was. At the end, he demands a "fall guy" for the police, just as Spade did. The hoodlum gang, instead of leaving, just shrug and their leader tells them philosophically that "the jig is up." The friend turns out to be the real scheming murderer -- Spade's Ambiguous Dame there, a secondary but likable character here.
The direction is okay. Mankiewicz was no slouch. And some of the writing is passable, as is Hodiak's performance as George Taylor and, especially, Lloyd Nolan's as the police lieutenant. The rest are pallid facsimiles. There are, in fact, too many quirky and colorful characters and none of them could act. Neither could Nancy Guild, although she was attractive enough.
Hodiak's pursuit of his own identity, his pal Larry Cravat, and the two million bucks grows tiresome -- and confusing too. There are too many leads, too many red herrings. We watch Hodiak travel from place to place, mostly meeting with hostility from people who don't even know him, garnering little scraps of information which may lead somewhere, or maybe not. The musical score has no lilt to it. And the characters have only one note on their instruments, except for Nolan who delivers sarcasm and irony with effortless aplomb.
Mankiewicz was to do much better, later on. These semi-noir mysteries were not his forte, though he made another one of them and that one, "No Way Out," was pretty damned good.
Let's recall John Huston's superb "The Maltese Falcon," in which the hero, Sam Spade, is hired to find a fabulously expensive statue of a bird whose trip through time has left a trail of dead bodies behind. Spade searches for the statue, discovering a little more about it each time he runs into the colorful and quirky figures that are associated with its pursuit. The Fat Man, the Gay Levantine, the dame with the past, the Gunsel -- they come crawling out of the woodwork, enough of them to make a minion. In the climactic scene they are all brought together in Spade's apartment, where all is explained. And they leave, only to have Spade ring up the police and clue them in, except for the Ambiguous Dame who is revealed as the chief villain.
I suspect "The Maltese Falcon" must have provided the model for this dark mystery, though enough cosmetic surgery has been performed to disguise the features of the original mold. Instead of the mysterious "black bird", John Hodiak, the man with no memory, pursues his own past and the two million dollars hidden somewhere within it. He runs into a gang of colorful and quirky characters. The Fat Man here is just a guy with a sinister face and a German accent and a classy phraseology. The Gunsel is a huge "tub of lard" who is barely able to string three sentences together. There's no Gay Levantine, but a few other characters make up for his absence. The Ambiguous Dame is split into her two constituents -- the louche broad who slings around French clichés and the honest, brave Nancy Guild who falls in love with Hodiak (and vice versa) two minutes after they meet. Hodiak is beaten up by the hoods, just as Spade was. At the end, he demands a "fall guy" for the police, just as Spade did. The hoodlum gang, instead of leaving, just shrug and their leader tells them philosophically that "the jig is up." The friend turns out to be the real scheming murderer -- Spade's Ambiguous Dame there, a secondary but likable character here.
The direction is okay. Mankiewicz was no slouch. And some of the writing is passable, as is Hodiak's performance as George Taylor and, especially, Lloyd Nolan's as the police lieutenant. The rest are pallid facsimiles. There are, in fact, too many quirky and colorful characters and none of them could act. Neither could Nancy Guild, although she was attractive enough.
Hodiak's pursuit of his own identity, his pal Larry Cravat, and the two million bucks grows tiresome -- and confusing too. There are too many leads, too many red herrings. We watch Hodiak travel from place to place, mostly meeting with hostility from people who don't even know him, garnering little scraps of information which may lead somewhere, or maybe not. The musical score has no lilt to it. And the characters have only one note on their instruments, except for Nolan who delivers sarcasm and irony with effortless aplomb.
Mankiewicz was to do much better, later on. These semi-noir mysteries were not his forte, though he made another one of them and that one, "No Way Out," was pretty damned good.