The Lady in the Lake (1946) dir. Robert Montgomery; starring Robert Montgomery, Audrey Totter, Lloyd Nolan, Leon Ames
Philip Marlowe (Montgomery) investigates the disappearance of a publisher’s (Ames) wife. Totter plays the publisher’s managing editor, hiring Marlowe with the aim of catching the wife cheating then catching Ames on the rebound. But there’s more to the disappearance than that.
Director Montgomery decided to film the movie as a first-person shooter, minus shooting – that is, that’s what the movie may look like to contemporary viewers. At the time, only seeing the movie’s star in reflective surfaces must have seemed very odd. To some degree it still does, since it means the other actors, Totter most of all, have to play directly to the camera, which somehow seems hokier with actors than with CGI characters.
Montgomery’s Marlowe is quick with snide, sneering quips, more so than Bogart with his more measured humor or Dick Powell with his smarter material which seems aimed more at self-defense; Montgomery’s voice doesn’t quite carry the movie. He also comes across as less of a tough guy, knocked out – fade to black – at least four times, three times by one punch.
Lloyd Nolan is a dependable, solid presence as a cop and might have been a better Marlowe – he played P.I. Mike Shayne in a series. With his gruff voice, Fedora dipped over one eye and thumbs in his waistband, he seems Bogart-ish. Since he’d been around at least as long as Bogart, I wonder if there was some sort of cross-fertilization in mannerisms. Tangentially, to give an idea of Nolan’s status in Hollywood, John Wayne said that when he read the script for Stagecoach, he suggested Nolan to the director, John Ford, to play the role Ford eventually gave to Wayne.
Totter is well-cast as a sort of femme fatale, and seems at ease acting directly to the camera. The measure of the movie’s success largely rests on her performance. It’s odd that she seems to have had few chances at better quality films – according to Eddie Muller (this was a TCM Noir Alley presentation) Montgomery was a friend, so she pulled out of The Killers to play in this one; The Killers made stars of Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner.
So, worth a watch as a one-off experiment or if you’re a real fan of Raymond Chandler’s P.I. on film, but the rather muddled plot (complex in the book with the same title) and other drawbacks, probably makes it of limited interest to general viewers.
Randy M.
I had seen this sometime within the last year, as I recall, but could not resist the NOIR ALLEY treatment. I too, thought Montgomery's voice was ill-suited to his character; in fact, it did not seem like his real voice. I have seen him in numerous other films, and this was a voice I could not recognize as his.
Yes, the one punch knockouts are strange, especially when there are often drawn-out fight sequences in the same film; cannot recall any in this one, though.
Gay Diplomat (1931) just as WWI is starting, people are in a train station, attempting to flee to various places. Captain Ivan Orloff (
Ivan Lebedeff) is in civilian clothes when he meets a woman, whose paper currency is rejected by the guy at the ticket office. Countess Diana Dorchy (G
enevieve Tobin). He offers her a ride, and falls in love with her. But, he is a counter espionage agent and she is an enemy spy, though neither knows about the other's role.
Not likely that anyone would bother to watch this, as the critics savaged it. So, here is the spoiler. During the war, he catches her in the act. He must turn her in, but he loves her. She escapes, the war ends, & they by chance, meet again in a train station. Happy Ending.
Another spy-romance film:
Inside the Lines (1930) The Brits have a military base on
the Rock of Gibraltar, and German spy Jane Gershon (
Betty Compson) poses as a woman nobody had seen since she was a child. Eric Woodhouse (
Ralph Forbes) the man nwho loved her when both lived in Germany before the war. So, both independently end up on the Rock, in a British military base, each one believing the other is a german agent, when both actually are British agents. Happy ending.
The Mighty McGurk (1947) Wallace Beery as an ex-heavyweight boxer, who now works for a bar owner in the Bowery (Edward Arnold). So, the big tough guy meets a ship of immigrants, to recruit 100 of them to work as laborers for some company. He is paid $100 to do so; but the 100th guy has a little boy in tow, whom he was to deliver to the boy's uncle. The kid has a tag pinned to his shirt with uncle's name & address on it. So, Slag McGurk takes the kid along, expecting to deliver him and be done with him soon. Johnny Burden (Cameron Mitchell (damn, this guy was young! I hardly recognized him!)) is a Salvation Army guy, who likes to parade around in front of Arnold's bar, but he had been a boxer himself, apparently trained by Slag. Now, they are not friends. So, the tag on the kid's shirt is lost, and McGurk is stuck with him.
Arnold's daughter returns from France, and he sends Slag out to meet her at the pier; though on bad terms with Mitchell, Beery sends him, knowing the two were lovers, much to Arnold's displeasure.
Mamie Steeple (
Aline MacMahon) has a pawnshop, where Slag had pawned his champion's belt. He desperately wants to retrieve it, but is perpetually broke. When he annys her, she puts it in the shop window, and continually lowers its price.
Far more to my liking than either of the other films. Hollywood seemed to have a thing for sticking big tough guys with little boys.
Professional Soldier (1935) put Victor McLaglen in a similar situation.
