Totter Noir Watch: Man In The Dark (1953)

Watched:  01/24/2026

Format:  YouTube

Viewing:  First

Director:  Lew Landers

I always like a movie that's entire premise is based on 1950's-era psychological science.  

Edmond O'Brien plays a former gangster who has been pinched.  Facing a minimum 10 year stretch, he agrees to a bit of Clockwork Orange scientification.  A doctor is going to perform surgery on his brain to remove his criminal element or some such.

On the other side of the surgery, he can't remember who he was or what he used to do, and is no longer a shady crook, I guess.  From a detective for an insurance company, we learn O'Brien boosted $130K prior to his incarceration, but nobody knows where it is, and now that includes O'Brien himself.*   O'Brien coming along fine when his old gang kidnaps him/ liberates him.  

For reasons that amount to "we're real dumb", the old gang thinks for way too long that O'Brien is faking his amnesia.  They trot out his girlfriend, Audrey Totter, to convince him to play ball.  Eventually, she realizes he doesn't remember she was his girlfriend - and, if I may, that would seem like a welcome surprise.

Anyway, Totter never really liked O'Brien before - or at least knew she was disposable to him.  But she likes this new version.  

But as the crooks (led by Ted de Corsia) start to press, O'Brien has a dream with clues!  Memory clues!  And they find a slip of paper with a number that must mean something.  

Anyway - it means going to the Oceanpark Pier pier you see in one in every 20 film noir movies, and having a face-off.  

Highlights of the movie include:  

• it has a dream sequence that isn't a patch on Spellbound, but is still entertaining
• plenty of Laffing Sal
• Audrey Totter in smashing dresses
• an extended "getaway" flashback sequence with no story impact that I am pretty sure is on the roofs of the backlot at the studio
• the only fistfight I've ever seen on a roller-coaster track while it's operational.  Some real stunt work here.

I wouldn't say the movie is great or essential, but Totter feels weirdly too good for this movie, putting depth into her character that I'm not sure the movie earns. So if you're looking to catch another solid role for her, here you go.

If the movie seems a bit odd, visually, it is a 2D presentation of a 3D movie.  So that might explain the long escape sequence and a few other scenes.  I am very curious how the roller coaster sequences would have looked.  Pretty good, I expect.

There is a curious "will he go back to his wily, crooked ways" tension to the movie, but it's really just about survival.  Why O'Brien doesn't just go to the cops, I do not know.  It does mean he punches a dude off the hill of a rollercoaster track, so...  it's not like this is entirely a "on the side of the angels" ending.

*I would think handing over the money would have been key to the court agreeing to let O'Brien be a scientific subject, but the ethics of experimenting on prisoners is at best a gray area in this movie