IMPACT (1949)

Walter Wiliams (Brian Donlevy) is a successful, happily married businessman; he has just won an argument with his board over the purchase of some factories and wants his wife Irene (Helen Walker) to join him on a short business trip with a layover vacation in Lake Tahoe. She stays behind with a toothache, and we soon discover that she's stayed behind to plot with her lover Jim to murder Walter on the road, then meet Jim at a nearby motel. Irene phones Walter and asks him to pick up Jim (claiming he's her cousin), who is stranded with car trouble. Walter does, and Jim manages to knock him out with a wrench and toss his body down a hill. Unluckily, Jim takes off on the mountain road and collides head-on into a truck, dying in a fiery explosion. Meanwhile, Walter comes to, in a rather woozy state, and hitches a ride on a moving van. When the wreck is discovered, the police assume that the charred remains in the car are Walter's. Walter, eventually realizing what the plan was, wanders about and winds up in Larkspur, Idaho where he meets Marsha (Ella Raines), an attractive female car mechanic, gets hired as an assistant, and even moves into her family's home as a boarder. He tells no one about his past but collects newspaper stories about his supposed death, and eventually about the arrest of Irene for his murder. When he tells Marsha the truth, she encourages him to resurface to save his wife, but when he does, his wife finds a way to put the blame on him for Jim's death, and for plotting to kill her as well. Only one person can clear him: Irene's maid Sui Lin (Anna May Wong), who has seemingly vanished. 

This film noir plays out like a variation on the mistaken identity trope, with a couple of plotholes. It's unclear how long, if at all, the traumatized Walter might have actually had amnesia right after the accident, a claim he makes to the cop but which might just be a story to buy him more time. It's also never explained what Irene thinks when Jim doesn't show up for their rendezvous after the attempt on Walter's life. Otherwise, this is a moderately engrossing noir, though Donlevy is a bit on the stodgy, boring side which rather dissipates some of the tension. Raines and Walker are both fine, and Charles Coburn (pictured with Walker) effectively plays against type as the chief cop trying to figure out if Walter is guilty or not. Wong is her usual stiff, artificial self but that kind of works with her character. There is some nice, if limited, location shooting on the streets of San Francisco. I suspect in six months, little about this movie will remain vivid in my memory, but I don't feel bad for having seen it. [TCM]