Interesting James Garner vehicle has him playing an amnesiac who wakes up in Central Park and doesn't remember who he is and spends the rest of the film trying to figure that out. He has a series of dreamlike encounters with various women who he thinks he recognizes, but who mostly don't recognize him, including Jean Simmons, Suzanne Pleshette, Katharine Ross, and Angela Lansbury. Directed by Delbert Mann ("Marty"), it's stylishly shot and features crisp black and white photogrpahy by Ellsworth Fredericks ("Seven Days in May"), but the film is so utterly pretentious and lacking in a coherent narrative. Garner and the strong cast, which also includes Jack Gilford, Raymond St. Jacques, Wesley Addy, and a pre-Star Trek Nichelle Nichols, are the only thing that keeps this pretentious mess watchable. On the positive side, there is also a nice jazzy score by Kenyon Hopkins ("The Hustler" and "The Fugitive Kind"). In his memoir "The Garner Files," Garner rated this as his worst movie, writing "I'd summarize the plot, but to this day, I have no clue what it is. Worst picture I ever made. What where they thinking? What was I thinking?" Garner may be a bit too hard on this film, because it's well produced from a technical standpoint and the cast is great, even if the script is an utter mess.

A man (James Garner) wakes up on a bench in NY Central Park with no memory. He has a phone number on a piece of paper. He calls the number and Gloria (Angela Lansbury) is woken up calling him Sam. He sees a Budweiser truck and a plane in the sky. So he calls himself Sam Buddwing. He goes to see Gloria but she doesn't recognize him. He thinks he knows a girl on the street calling out "Grace!" He follows her in a cab but her name is Janet (Katharine Ross). Although he recalls her as Grace during a long college romance. There is an escaped insane mental patients in the city. He notices his cracked ring is inscripted FROM G.V. He meets actress Fiddle Corwin (Suzanne Pleshette) who helps out the handsome man. Then he has a flashback with Fiddle as Grace and he's a musician as they struggle as a couple. A rich drunk socialite in a game picks up Sam. A memory is jogged and he recalls his life before he lost his memory.This could have been a great movie about paranoia. When the cop gets surrounded by a crowd and then they follow it up with a raving lunatic, I thought it was going somewhere interesting. I thought maybe Katharine Ross was actually Grace and she was hiding from him. That would have been a much better movie. This is rather bland. The end really has no tension. The flashback gets tiresome. The high hopes early on soon fades away.

Oscar-winning film director Delbert Mann ( The Outsider (1961), Marty (1955) - TV, Playhouse 90, Goodyear Playhouse, Omnibus, Producers Showcase, Playwrights '56, Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse, Schlitz Playhouse, Masterpiece Playhouse) adapts Evan Hunter's novel "Buddwing" and with the cinematography of Ellsworth Fredericks (Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Seven Days in May (1964)) and a great original jazzy score by Kenyon Hopkins (composer for Baby Doll (1956), 12 Angry Men (1957), The Fugitive Kind (1959), The Hustler (1961), to create a stylized "Jazz Noir". Filming in 1965, Mister Buddwing is one of those lost films that are on the cusp between Film Noir and Neo Noir. Sort of a psychological noir rather than a "crime" noir. A melancholy film that plays with time, space and your mind as the various vignettes overlap it's eerie and noirishly suspenseful, but at times darkly comic. It requires multiple viewings to fully comprehend.The film stars James Garner in a role that really displays his acting chops in a performance far removed from his wisecracking Bret Maverick (disregard his contention that this is his worst film, he sells himself way too short). Garner plays one of Film Noir's touchstone tropes the amnesiac. The film opens with an unfocused shot of the sky sliced diced and fragmented by bare branches . As the frame focuses and our view pans we see the branches are trees, we see buildings, and Central Park at the corner of 59th and 5th. In an homage to Robert Montgomery's "The Lady In The Lake" and the beginning of "Dark Passage", the film displays an intriguing POV sequence that begins when hands "rub" the eye of the camera, it also begins a faint jazz heartbeat increasing in tempo and volume as "we" the character sitting on a park bench search frantically through out suit pockets (for identification) combing out a train timetable, a scrap of paper with a name Gloria and phone number and some pills. A ring on his finger has an inscription "from G.V.". The POV sequence continues until we stumble into a mirror at the Plaza Hotel when Garner is revealed. He has neither money or ID but he does remember the name of a woman, a woman named Grace.Using a lobby phone and giving a fictitious room number he calls Gloria (Angela Lansbury) to try and discover his identity. Gloria a divorced floozy with a heart of gold, takes pity on him and gives him money so that he can find himself. So begins his jazz odyssey through the streets of New York. In his quest for Grace, Garner meets three women, Janet (Katherine Ross), Fiddle (Susanne Pleshette), and The Blonde (Jean Simmons), each of the women he at first mistakens for Grace. So at first we see Garner interact with each woman in their true identities and at some point they become a vivid flashback to his relationship with Grace at different stages of his life with Grace, the starry eyed young love stage, the struggle with real life, and the consequences of wrong decisions made. All this makes the viewer a little disoriented, a little lost, exactly how James Garner's character feels throughout the movie.The film features the neighborhoods of midtown Manhattan, Times Square, and the Queensboro Bridge as its backdrop creating a cinematic memory link to classic Noirs, The Sweet Smell Of Success, Kiss Of Death, Killers Kiss, The Unsuspected. Wonderful melancholy jazz compositions accompany Garner as he wanders the streets.All the three actresses are outstanding in their dual rolls.Watch for Joe Mantell's cab driver character's hilarious monologue then pay attention for its echo with the 2nd cab driver Billy Halop, the original leader of the Dead End Kids. Watch for Nichelle Nichols appearance as a dice player, and Jack Gilford's interaction with Garner in a lunch counter.Available on DVD from the Warner Brothers Archive Collection. 9/10

I recently saw this on TCM and was surprised that I had never seen this before. Based on the novel by popular novelist/writer Evan Hunter who wrote such classics as The blackboard Jungle and the screenplay for The Birds this was adapted for the screen by Hunter and Dale Wasserman. this is the story of an amnesiac (James Garner) who wakes up on a Central Park park bench with no idea who he is. Dressed in a gray suit he discovers only two possible clues to his identity, a ring with the initials G.V. inscribed and a piece of paper with a telephone number on it. He has the name of Grace in his mind who he assumes must be his wife and so with the lack of a name of his own his creates one on the spur of the moment in Sam Buddwing and begins his search through Manhattan of himself and of Grace. His adventure brings him to several memorable characters in Angela Lansbury as the loose woman with a kind heart Gloria, Suzanne Pleshette as actress Fiddle Corwin, Katherine Ross as the pretty and studious Janet, Jack Gifford as restaurant owner Izzy Schwartz, Joe Mantell as the 1st cab driver, George Voskovec as a shabby old man who calls himself God and Jean Simmons as the high society blonde out on treasure hunt for a party. This film was nominated for two Academy Awards for Best Black and White Art direction and Best Black and White Costume. It has a gritty New York location feel and frequently uses hand-held cameras and is photographed by cinematographer Ellsworth Fredricks. Directed by Delbert Mann best known for directing such classics as Marty, Desire Under the elms and Separate Tables this is not one of his best but it's quirky and interesting and hold your interest thanks to great on screen performances by the fine cast. Garner is better served as an actor when he has some light comedic roles and he falls a little short in this straight dramatic role where he only smiles once briefly in the entire film. The ending falls short too but all in all it's a different film and I would give it a 7.5 out of 10.