Eddie Rice has served in World War II, won a silver star, but lost his memory to a piece of shrapnel buried in this brain (the x-ray is flashed onto the screen). It's an "organic" rather than "psychological" amnesia and therefore incurable. Released from a hospital, Eddie returns home to L. A. to find that he was once Eddie Riccardi and that he was a no-good, double-crossing hood, hated by both police and former gang members and also distrusted by his ex-wife. Eddie Rice is a Dr. Jekyll, but his pre-amnesia self was a Mr. Hyde. It's a curious and unexplained transformation — from evil to good. There is almost no psychological continuity between his ante- and post-trauma personality. Eddie the amnesiac is utterly untroubled to discover that he was once a monster. He extricates himself from the mob, jettisons his past, and starts a new life. His amnesia is a thing apart.
The direction (by Robert Florey) and the noir cinematography are splendid. John Payne, a fine, underappreciated actor, (as Rice/Riccardi) cannot possibly convey the psychological complexity that should have been, but wasn't, written into the script.
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