I've now reported on thirty-two separate amnesia movies and there are surely many more out there to which I am oblivious. Why so many? How come Shakespeare didn't write an amnesia play? Why are there no classic novels about amnesia? Didn't unsuspecting folks get themselves bopped on the head in previous centuries? Didn't knights ever fall off their stallions and thwack their helms and beavers?
Here's an obvious answer to the gimmick's popularity: amnesia provides three of the major elements of all story-telling: Mystery, Quest, and Identity (or as King Lear puts it, "Who is it that can tell me who I am?") But why is it repeated so obsessively in film?
Today a twofer, bringing the grand total to thirty-four. In Two in the Dark (1936), an amnesiac (Walter Abel) comes to awareness on a street corner and suspects that he has committed a murder. Rest easy; he didn't do any such thing. But he needs the help of a good-looking out-of-work actress (Margot Grahame) to establish his innocence. His amnesia is garden variety, "bang-bang". One blow to the old bean and he forgets who he is; later a second whomp and it all comes back in a flash (in the form of a flashback). Very convenient, very tidy, but not very imaginative. The film is languidly paced, almost slow-motion.
Curiously, Two in the Dark was remade nine years afterward as Two O-Clock Courage with the director of the earlier film serving as the producer of the later. It was a good idea to try again, because the later film was directed by Anthony Mann, who keeps things brisk. Although the plot and a great deal of the dialog was copied wholesale, it's a much better and different film, mostly because the amnesiac's fellow investigator is now a wise-cracking female taxi-driver -- a character straight out of the screwball comedies. When she's on screen, the film becomes a feast of badinage. Tom Conway as the amnesiac is dignified and expressionless, but Ann Rutherford steals the show as the fast-talking cabbie.
"Bang-bang" or "thwack-thwack" amnesia arrives and departs easily. It comes with an on-off switch. Contrary to human psychological experience, it leaves no residue except for a couple of neat Band-Aids -- one on each side of the head.
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