Somewhere in the Night (1946) Classic Film Noir Mystery DVD - Perfect for Movie Collectors & Film Noir Enthusiasts

John Hodiak always reminds me of a pre-Travolta John Travolta, and his little mustache here exactly matches his sergeant's stripes. Nancy Guild is sultry, take-charge, jokey and terribly young. Her movie career didn't pan out the way it might have, and yet there's nothing to be ashamed of among her credits. GIVE MY REGARDS TO BROADWAY and BLACK MAGIC are especially good, and she's excellent in both. In SOMEWHERE IN THE NIGHT Hodiak and Guild make a great screen team, one I wish had been repeated in other films.Eddie Muller's commentary is sparse, considering his great reputation as the Czar of Film Noir. Over and over again I kept expecting him to mention things which even I knew. Repeatedly he tells us that "this sort of nightcclub is a staple of film noir," or "a crooked fortune teller is a staple of film noir." While he stops himself from saying what he apparently feels, that the film is a string of cliches, what we want from a commentary is not an analysis of how the film is similar to all others in its category; we want to know why it is different. He knows a lot about the movies, he just seems too casual to show it off. And he knows a lot about Mankiewicz, so I wonder during the film's extended Salvation Army scene, why he never thinks to compare it to similar scenes in Mankiewicz' later GUYS AND DOLLS. That would have made all the difference in watching it.And he's also maybe too macho to tell us much about Anderson Lawlor, the failed Hollywood actor of the 1920s whose producing debut this was. Muller mentions that Lawler was a "friend of Tallulah Bankhead," thus he has an indirect link to John Hodiak, with whom Bankhead co-starred in LIFEBOAT, but surely Lawler's notoriety as one of the few openly gay actors in Hollywood, and his status as Gary Cooper's "maybe" boyfriend could have been mentioned, if only to help illuminate some of the darker corners of SOMEWHERE's mise-en-scene, like that opening hospital tent scene, man after man in bed after bed, each one better looking than the next, or the scene in the "Elite Baths"? How do such scenes play out in light of Lawlor's biographical melodrama? For more details on Lawlor, interested parties mioght consult William Mann's BEHIND THE SCREEN: HOW GAYS AND LESBIANS SHAPED HOLLYWOOD 1910-1969, or JACK LAWRENCE'S recent memoir THEY ALL SANG MY SONGS.