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REVIEW by GUEST CONTRIBUTOR DORIAN TB

Visit Dorian’s Web-Site – http://doriantb.blogspot.com/

Every P.I. needs leads—Lila Leeds!

Director/star Robert Montgomery’s advice:
Don’t look directly into the tomato-cam!

 
In Lady in the Lake (LitL), the durable Robert Montgomery not only played author Raymond Chandler’s tough but noble P.I. Philip Marlowe, he also made his solo directorial debut, having previously helped director John Ford to finish the 1945 war drama They Were Expendable when Ford broke his leg on location. Marlowe draws on his life of detection and crime-fighting to write a short story, “If I Should Die Before I Live.” (“They tell me the profits are good,” Marlowe says dryly. Wow, how can I get in on this gig?) Marlowe submits his work to Kingsby Publications, home of such pulp fiction mags as Lurid Detective and Murder Masterpieces. (Maybe Marlowe can go out to lunch with Walter Mitty and pick up pulp fiction tips!)

Is Marlowe out of his skull to trust Adrienne?

Before he can say “byline,” editor Adrienne Fromsett (Audrey Totter in her first major leading role after her memorable appearance in The Postman Always Rings Twice) has Marlowe up to his neck in murder, dirty cops, and missing dames, including Chrystal Kingsby (or “Crystal” if you believe the wire from El Paso in Adrienne’s apartment), the wife of Kingsby Publications’ head honcho Derace Kingsby (Leon Ames from The Postman Always Rings Twice, Meet Me in St. Louis, They Were Expendable, and so much more!). To top it off, you can see things Marlowe’s way, literally!

Between LitL and the rueful Humphrey Bogart/Lauren Bacall noir drama Dark Passage, 1947 seemed to be The Year of the Subjective Camera. Before all those slasher movies  came along during the last few decades, LitL used the subjective camera treatment; hell, the camera was practically a character in the flick!

Throughout most of LitL, we see everything exactly as Marlowe sees it; the only times we see Marlowe/Montgomery’s mug is when he looks in a mirror, as well as in a brief prologue, an entrè-acte segment, and an epilogue. In the trailer featured on the spiffy DVD version of LitL (along with an enjoyable and informative commentary track by ace film historians Alain Silver and James Ursini), MGM’s publicity department did its best to push the film as the first interactive movie experience: “MGM presents a Revolutionary motion picture; the most amazing since Talkies began! YOU and ROBERT MONTGOMERY solve a murder mystery together! YOU accept an invitation to a blonde’s apartment! YOU get socked in the jaw by a murder suspect!”

YOU occasionally start snickering in spite of yourself when the subjective camera gimmick teeters dangerously close to parodying itself, like when Adrienne moves in for a smooch with Our Hero The Camera. As Totter’s Adrienne spars verbally with Marlowe in the first half of the film, some of her facial expressions are pretty funny, too, though I’m not sure all of them were meant to be. Totter uses the arched eyebrow technique done so much more effectively later by Leonard Nimoy on Star Trek; Angela Lindvall in CQ, Roman Coppola’s affectionate salute to 1960s pop art films; Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson; and one of Team Bartilucci’s favorites, sexy Eunice Gayson from the early James Bond thrillers Dr. No and From Russia with Love.

The mirror has one face and a beautiful babe!

In fairness to Totter, she and the cast and crew had a challenge on their hands, considering they all pretty much had to re-learn how to act in front of the camera for LitL. As Jeff Stafford wrote in his article on the TCM Web site, “A good deal of the budget went toward elaborate camera set-ups and breakaway sets. ‘The real challenge was the filming itself,’ Montgomery told writer John Tuska in his book, The Detective in Hollywood. ‘We had to do a lot of rehearsing. Actors are trained not to look at the camera. I had to overcome all that training. I had a basket installed under the camera and sat there so that, at least, the actors could respond to me, even if they couldn’t look directly at me.’”

“DeGarmot, it’s times like this that
I wish I was back on the U.S.S. Caine!”

Having said that, I felt that the subjective camera technique in LitL worked more often than not. In particular, I thought the fight scenes and a harrowing sequence where an injured Marlowe crawls out of his wrecked car worked beautifully. It helps that Steve Fisher provided a good solid screenplay for Chandler’s novel, though Chandler purists were annoyed and disappointed that the novel’s pivotal Little Fawn Lake sequence was relegated to a speech in the recap scene in the middle. Apparently, Montgomery and company tried to film that scene on location, but the subjective camera treatment proved harder to do in the great outdoors back then, so they gave up. I’d love to see how today’s filmmakers would do it, with all the different equipment and resources available! I also liked David Snell’s music (with an assist by an uncredited Maurice Goldman), and the way he made the Christmas background music sound increasingly foreboding. According to the IMDb, Goldman said, “I never got credit for being the composer of the choral score for Lady in the Lake. In those days, young, unknown composers who were hoping for a career writing film scores got their foot in the door by letting someone else take credit for their work. We had to agree, as long as we received some musical credit for our part in the film’s music.”

However you feel about the subjective camera approach, all the performances are top-notch, including supporting players Tom Tully (Oscar-nominee for The Caine Mutiny) as honest cop Captain Fergus X. Kane; Lloyd Nolan in one of his best performances as Lt. DeGarmot, a conniving cop who knows more than he’s telling; Dick Simmons as smooth, sly gigolo Chris Lavery, who went on to be the star of TV’s Sgt. Preston of the Yukon; and an intense dramatic turn by young Jayne Meadows SPOILER ALERT…who essentially plays three characters!…END SPOILER ALERT. I also love the little throwaway bits here and there, like Kingsby Publications’ charmingly distracting receptionist (Lila Leeds, who gained some notoriety after being busted for marijuana possession with Robert Mitchum), the phone chat Marlowe overhears in the Press Room (“Palm Springs? What’s the matter with Anaheim?”); the coroner’s mild disappointment when he’s told that the corpse in question, Lavery, is a man; and my favorite, Captain Kane’s phone conversation with his wife and child as he prepares to play Santa Claus for his “little dumplin’ darlin’” on Christmas Eve. Montgomery’s sardonic snap mostly works well for cynical Marlowe, though he sometimes forgets to tone it down during tender dialogue with Adrienne, making him sound like cinema’s crankiest Marlowe! Totter eventually tones down her mugging and becomes genuinely affecting as her Adrienne, after trying to be “the bright, hard lady,” lets down her guard and her hair (almost literally), with love growing between Marlowe and Adrienne at last. You may love or hate this Lady…, but if you enjoy Chandler’s mysteries and film noir in general, and you’re intrigued by offbeat movie-making techniques, I urge you to give her a try!

YOU play detective with cinema’s crankiest Philip Marlowe!
(And play house at Christmas with Audrey Totter!)