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In filming this sad tale, Ben Hecht intelligently cut costs and also sharpened his effects by hiring eager newcomers and first-rate but not too expensive veterans whose capacity for hard work matched his own. Chief weakness of George Antheil's alert score is the absence of Spectre's traditional music (Carl Maria von Weber's Invitation to the Waltz). Among the film's good points: young Kirov's tormented athleticism; Viola Essen's fresh beauty; the rich, workmanlike performances of Miss Anderson and Mr. Chekhov.
Contending with such excellence, and often winning the fall: the purple-plush artiness, 200-proof corn and gross sentimentality which Ben Hecht often fails to separate from the honest and original features of his talent.
Somewhere in the Night (20th Century-Fox) is a beryllium-hard thriller and a rattling good celluloid chase. Goal of the fast, frenzied search: the hero's lost memory.
Battle-shocked Marine John Hodiak wakes up in a naval hospital suffering from amnesia, a fairly uncommon disease that appears to be as prevalent in Hollywood as the common cold. With little more than his discharge papers as a clue, Hodiak sets out to reconstruct his past. His unflagging curiosity gets him a few stiff rights to the jaw, raps on the head, unpleasant threats from sinister strangers and the love of pretty nightclub singer Nancy Guild (rhymes, her studio insists, with wild).
Thanks to the practiced hand of Hollywood Oldtimer Joe Mankiewicz, who directed and co-authored the screen play, Somewhere in the Night is a taut, tidy package of suspense. But what 20th Century-Fox publicists are excited about is screen newcomer Nancy Guild, who looks, talks and acts a bit too much like the same studio's Gene Tierney for her own good. Nancy was a University of Arizona coed until LIFE recently printed some photographs of her modeling college-girl fashions. Darryl Zanuck took one look, issued the necessary ringing proclamation; a new leading lady was born.