George Taylor returns from WWII with amnesia. Back home in Los Angeles, while trying to track down his old identity, he stumbles onto a 3-year old murder case and a hunt for a missing $2 mil... Read allGeorge Taylor returns from WWII with amnesia. Back home in Los Angeles, while trying to track down his old identity, he stumbles onto a 3-year old murder case and a hunt for a missing $2 million.George Taylor returns from WWII with amnesia. Back home in Los Angeles, while trying to track down his old identity, he stumbles onto a 3-year old murder case and a hunt for a missing $2 million.
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaDuring the course of the film, the name of the mysterious 'Larry Cravat' is said 85 times.
- GoofsGeorge Taylor is in the hospital at the beginning of the film with a broken arm and his head swathed in bandages. When they remove the bandages, he has a perfectly trimmed moustache.
- Quotes
Christy Smith: In about two minutes, a bouncer is coming back in here with no sense of humor. He's a foot bigger than you in all directions. That's what I think.
- ConnectionsReferenced in Remington Steele: Cast in Steele (1984)
- SoundtracksPaducah
(uncredited)
Music by Harry Warren
Played when George removes the postcard and replaces it with a matchbook
It's the stuff noir heaven is made of, the notion of a previous life and being karmically reborn into a next one, night in the big city rife with hidden knowledge, demanding we investigate. Coming back to a Los Angeles hotel that was his last known residence before the war, he discovers a satchel he had checked in, and lo, there's a note inside, and one that tells him he was paid a hefty amount of money.
At so many points sparks threaten to fly, evocative places are visited in the middle of the night, portentous characters are looking for him around town. He's beaten up, nearly run over, framed for murder. In the docks he meets with a wily narrator - a pretend spiritualist - who openly tells him he should not trust a word he says. There is another house where a spinster daughter makes as if she knows him but does she? A visit in a sanatorium reveals someone else who is locked up, unable to remember.
So much ought to have been just right here, making this worthy of other entries in my list of top noirs, and yet the best quality of films like Crossfire or Out of the Past is that they are able to ski on the edges of semiconscious knowledge, of self unexpectedly slipping into a world he gives rise to. Here we have a self-conscious filmmaker in control, who, it gradually becomes apparent, is trying to construct that noir sense. Instead of spontaneously slipping out through back roads, we're taken places that someone has just finished renovating for us.
It's the difference between detective fiction of the Sherlock Holmes kind and film noir where a narrator is not fully in control. So of course it all ends with the bad guy finally unmasking himself and making a big fuss of explaining things to us. Of course it's timed just right for the cop to make the arrest.
It's all a bit cleverly here, self-conscious, and you'll see it in the self-referential nod to movies. The same filmmaker would go on to do All About Eve.
The more tantalizing notion in all this for me is that the note professing such hatred for him really was from a loved one he stood up one day, or was it a last letter that he wrote and was planning to send but never got around to?
- chaos-rampant
- Jul 23, 2019
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- The Lonely Journey
- Filming locations
- Union Station - 800 N. Alameda Street, Downtown, Los Angeles, California, USA(where George Taylor examines the briefcase he recovered from storage)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $1,500,000
- Runtime1 hour 50 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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