What a strange little movie, odd even by amnesia-on-film standards! Film amnesia is the most malleable and flexible of illnesses, as fact free (and fact-averse) as the EPA under Trump..
In this modest 1942 adventure, David Talbot, played by William Powell affecting a slight now-you-hear-it-now-you-don't French accent, is either an amnesia victim or an amnesia scammer. He either was or wasn't a criminal before the accident in which he apparently lost his memory.
An extortionist-grifter Henri Sarrou, played by Basil Rathbone, who looks like "two profiles glued together," is trying to squeeze him for a million francs in exchange for not turning him over to the police for a murder that he might or might not have committed in his former life, if he had one.
I don't think I'm giving away any secrets to say that all turns out for the best. But what is interesting, amnesia-wise, is that there is no recovery of memory. Talbot's amnesia never resolves, and he comes to the end of the film with no knowledge of three-quarter of his life, and that this painful situation doesn't seem to compromise or concern him the least little bit. Off he goes, at the end, blithely, with his luminous bride Hedy Lamarr, at his side.
There are holes within holes in the plot, but what is most striking, I think, is how casually amnesia is deployed, as if losing one's memory is no more a challenge to selfhood and identity than a case of sniffles.
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