Una donna nel lago

I saw this film on TMC on Christmas Eve 2000. I thought it was pretty interesting. The first first-person film I've ever seen. It really caught the first-person POV with which Chandler wrote the novel. I loved Marlowe, wise-cracking, one-liners ("Do you fall in love with all of your clients? Only the ones in skirts.") I thought the director handled the camera very well, with the mirrors to show the first-person perspective. I like it a lot. Great noir! Kept me riveted.

Robert Montgomery was a pretty savvy guy. As I recall, President Eisenhower tapped him to be the first presidential adviser on TV appearances at a time when the tube was still a new- fangled technology. No doubt, his being a well known Republican also helped.

Too bad this experiment in the subjective camera fails as clearly as it does. I'm sure it took guts for Montgomery to pitch the idea to the notoriously conservative MGM. But he did get the opportunity. My feeling is that he took on too much for this, his first feature as a director.

First, he's not only directing but starring as well. That might be okay if he weren't also refashioning his image from lounge-lizard playboy to tough-talking private eye. After all, Dick Powell had managed a similar transition the year before in the highly effective Murder, My Sweet (1944). The trouble here is that we seldom see Marlowe (Montgomery), thanks to the subjective camera. Instead we hear him all the time in a pinched unnatural voice more annoying than compelling. Nor, for that matter, does the tough-guy tone match Marlowe's or narrator Montgomery's dapper appearance. Despite some clever cracks from scripter Fisher, the transition just doesn't work.

Just as troublesome is the complex Chandler novel that Fisher adapts without simplifying. The resulting narrative is almost impossible to unravel, which compounds a slow-moving camera whose subjective pov has to avoid the kind of quick-moving pans that might disorient or upset the viewer. Together, they produce a labored result, both visually and narratively. A simpler story-line would have demanded less from sometimes over-burdened viewers.

This is not to say the experiment doesn't occasionally produce interesting effects, especially the hazy, claustrophobic climb out of the wrecked car. Then there's the blonde receptionist's come-hither look while exiting the room that almost had me leaving my chair to follow. Note, however, how the the subjective eye of the camera alters traditional assumptions about movie acting . When Marlowe grills Adrienne Fromsett (Totter), the camera doesn't cut back and forth in routine conversational style. Rather the camera stays on Totter the entire time Marlowe eyeballs her. Thus, Totter has to perform uninterrupted for an extended period in which any false note or exaggeration gets magnified; at the same time, flaws cannot be finessed in the editing process. Rather, the whole scene has to be re-shot. Though the players do well enough, I suspect the novel technique was not popular.

If the movie fails, it's at least an honorable failure. Then again, the talented Montgomery bounced back in his next dual effort Ride the Pink Horse (1948), a gripping noir expertly acted and directed. Apparently, appropriate lessons were learned from this disappointing initial effort.

Out of the many Marlowe novel adaptations, this must be one of the closest to the spirit of the original. Unfortunately Chandler himself does not seem to have had the opportunity to contribute to the screenplay - although there are plenty of Chandleresque wisecracks. The film, unlike most of the other adaptions reflects the original author's full dislike of the cops (although the tough police chief having to answer a telephone call from his daughter during an interrogation is an unusual appeal for the viewer's understanding), and mistrust bordering on pathological hatred of women (I suspect that the ending is an uncharacteristic 'cop out' to assuage the producer's or popular taste). Director/star Robert Montgomery shows great self-restraint by appearing only briefly in the action. When he does show himself, mainly in mirror-reflections, the star appears (as in that other great latter day film noir, China Town) battered and bruised and not at all flattering. The plot is suitably twisted and confusing - just like the novels. And the concept of timing the whole dark affair against the backdrop of the Christmas holidays only emphasises the bleakness of the subject matter. Incidentally the idea of continuing the opening titles' jolly Christmas carol chorus in darker, more disturbing tones throughout the soundtrack is fascinating and I think unique. Audrey Totter (whatever happened to her?) makes a very sexy femme fatale. And as she plays most of her lines to camera we are seduced just as protagonist Marlowe. On top of that, her gowns are absolutely magnificent examples of forties chic. Lloyd Nolan deserves special mention as a superb heavy. What a wonderful example of Hollywood film noir.

Shatteringly clumsy and agonizingly inept treatment of a Chandler story, totally lacking in style, variety and excitement. First impressions, for once, can be trusted: the disastrous opening scene in which Marlowe sits at his desk and *addresses the camera* gives you an utterly correct impression of the kind of cinematic screw-up you are in for. Next disaster: Robert Montgomery is a wholly uninteresting and un-charismatic actor whose attempts to portray the fast-talking, back-chatting Marlowe frequently come across as merely nasty. Failure Number Three is the ludicrous decision to film the entire story as a series of 'point-of-view' shots, giving us a 'Marlowe's-eye-view' of what little there is to see (Don't miss the bit where Marlowe crawls on his hands and knees - and we see the backs of his hands - before going on to use a telephone - when, gosh, we find ourselves looking at a telephone...). The two-fold pointlessness of the continual P.O.V. beggars belief: first, because it throws the weight on supporting players whose third-rate skills cannot carry it; second, because the fact that we have to watch a series of long, unbroken, unvaried, UNINTERESTING takes - in which whoever Marlowe is talking to simply faces the camera 'square-on' and talks 'back' to it - make vast stretches of the film UNBEARABLY TEDIOUS to watch and the details incredibly difficult to take in. Directors don't cut, employ 'reverse angles', reaction shots, profiles and so on for no reason. Fourth problem: removing Marlowe almost entirely from the visible action removes a lot of useful possibilities and adds PRECISELY NONE. Fifth problem: when Marlowe *is* actually visible, all we see is some lug talking to the camera - whereas a 'voice-over' would at least let us see something *different* happening. And why angle the story as a 'solve-it-yourself' mystery when *everyone* tries hard to work out a Chandler plot anyway? All in all, the results are so abysmal that one asks oneself how it could possibly have come to be done that way. Well, here are my suggestions. First, Bogart is a tough act to follow: by putting Marlowe out of view here, someone must have thought they were avoiding unfortunate comparisons. Second, look who the director is: yes, it's wooden leading man Robert Montgomery, who plainly can't see how bad his direction is when he's acting, and won't see (or hear) how bad his acting is when he's directing. Someone has bitten off more than they can chew - and this is the result: an unwatchable, saggy mess that manages to be significantly less interesting than 90 minutes spent putting your books in alphabetical order.

For a suspense writer whose observations of mid-20th-century Los Angeles proved so gimlet-eyed that he has been enshrined as the city's unofficial bard, Raymond Chandler had a bumpy fling with Hollywood. The first of his five major novels to be filmed during the classic period of film noir, Farewell, My Lovely was first turned into an installment in the Falcon series of programmers, then into Edward Dmytryk's 1944 Murder, My Sweet (a success, but too short; to do justice to Chandler's atmospherics and milieu demands longer time spans than the movies allot them).

From 1946, probably the most adroit blending of style and content taken from his works was Howard Hawks' The Big Sleep. But its popularity, then and now, owes as much to the chemistry between Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall – and to the frisky, irreverent tone Hawks brought to the movie – as to Chandler, whose outlook was one of dispassionate observation tinged with disgust.

The following year, The Brasher Doubloon, from the book The High Window, can be deemed a failure. That leaves the odd case of The Lady in the Lake, also from ‘47, which Robert Montgomery, starring as Philip Marlowe, ill-advisedly decided to direct himself. The movie labors under two huge handicaps: one of technique, the other of tone.

Cited often (and often by those who may not have actually seen the movie) for its subjective use of the-camera-as-character, The Lady in The Lake flounders on an idea that may have sounded good when initially floated but had to have looked bad once the first rushes came in.

Except for an explanatory prologue (the necessity for which should have raised red flags) or in scenes where he's caught in a window or mirror, Montgomery's Marlowe remains unseen. We, through the camera lens, are the detective. Conceivably, this gimmick might have worked at a later date, when swift, lithe Steadicams were part of Hollywood's technical arsenal. But in1947, the camera lumbers along as though it were being shoved through wet sand. As a result the pace slows to deadening, as though a senescent Marlowe were tracking down clues from the rail of an aluminum walker.

In consequence, time that might profitably been expended on filling in missing pieces of the puzzle gets wasted on Marlowe's getting from point A to point B. Vital and evocative parts of Chandler's novel take place in the summer resort areas of Puma Point and Little Fawn Lake; that snail of a camera, however, was not up to a hike in the great outdoors, so the movie preserves none of them.

And in tossing away chunks of the novels to accommodate budgets and shooting schedules, movie versions (like this one) mistake Chandler's strengths, which did not lay in plot. (The scriptwriters on The Big Sleep, including William Faulkner, couldn't figure out who killed one of the characters, so they asked Chandler, who didn't know either.)

His strengths were in weaving intricate webs of duplicity and deceit shot through with corruption and dread. That was heavy fare for Hollywood – even during the noir cycle. So stories tended to be simplified and atmosphere lightened: the freighted response gave way to the wisecrack, suggestive tension between two characters turned into a meet-cute, the brooding loner became a red-blooded American joe.

So, in The Lady in The Lake, the icy and questionable Adrienne Fromsett of the book (Audrey Totter) is now a sassy minx to Marlowe's snappy man-about-town, and so on. The plot deals with Marlowe's attempts to find a missing woman (an off-screen character whom the Christmas-card credits, in a droll fit of Francophone humor, call Ellay Mort).

Is a verdict possible? Some viewers find the movie's conceits and distortions amateurish and self-congratulating, while others overlook them to find a vintage mystery from postwar vaults. The Lady in The Lake remains a flawed experiment that over the years has developed its own distinctive – if not quite distinguished – period bouquet.