No one could say Mank didn't have a checkered career: In the 1930s he was castigated for daring to re-write Scott Fitzgerald (in his capacity as Producer on Three Comrades, Scott's only solo writing credit, he felt obliged to 'tidy' up several sequences) and in the 1960s he was the guy brought in to re-write and 'salvage' Cleopatra but in between he initially wrote then wrote and directed some very tasty fare indeed culminating in his two magnum opii A Letter To Three Wives And All About Eve. Somewhere In the Night dates from 1946, the same year his second directorial effort Dragonwyck was released and it's well up to snuff. A lot of 'amnesiac' films are, by definition, forgettable, but not this one. Mank assembled as tasty a supporting cast as had ever been shoehorned into one film ranging from Whit Bissell through Harry Morgan, Jeff Corey to the standout Josephine Hutchinson. Leading from the front are the slightly wooden John Hodiak - marriage to Ann Baxter didn't improve his acting -, newcomer Nancy Guild, Lloyd Nolan and Richard Conte and Mank keeps the balls spinning in the air leaving little time for awkward questions - like why would Conte - who'd got away with murder for three years, introduce Hodiak to a detective friend (Nolan) knowing that Hodiak was trying to get to to bottom of the very murder for which he, Conte, was responsible. This the kind of movie, popular at the time, in which a protagonist who is possibly a murderer is befriended by a girl/woman who's never met him before - for example Alad Ladd and Veronica Lake in The Blue Dahlia and/or in which a street-wise gal like Guild here, has to have the expressions 'private eye' and 'shamus' explained to her. None of this detracts from an enjoyable ride and it's one to add to your Blockbuster shopping list.