The Lady in the Lake

Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery, 1947) Call it an experiment that fails—but a noble try.  Bob Montgomery took his opportunity to make a low-budget pot-boiler of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe mystery and take it as close to the source as he could...in spirit, anyway. Taking Chandler's first-person narration-style and translating it into cinematic terms. Instead of reading inside Marlowe's head, we're seeing out of his eye-sockets—I didn't know Marlowe was monocular. Nor did I know he was borderline schizophrenic—with cooing voices in the background, passing for a dramatic score (at least it's organic).

Chandler hated this one. He'd written his own screenplay adaptation (that wasn't used) and thought the POV work...didn't work. It doesn't, really. In fact, it's creepy. We, the audience, are constantly being talked to directly, with Marlowe's replies in voice-over—but because we don't see him, those replies are so "on-the-nose" as to be bluntly obvious. In a way, this direct method robs us of actually seeing Marlowe's thoughts, playing across the face of the actor portraying him. No, Marlowe has to say everything on his mind, making him the lamest of detectives—he's always telling people of his suspicions of them. Nice detective work, there, shamus.

But, it does follow the story...in the same way a stage play might follow it. We're kinda "stuck" inside Marlowe's head, and any investigation—the thing that distinguishes this story in the Marlowe canon is that it takes him out of L.A. But, we never get out of rooms. We lose some characters, and the bigger shocks (the discovery of "the lady in the lake," for instance, which they probably couldn't show as it's pretty gruesome in the book) are talked about happening off-camera. Nope. Everybody's standing around talking to each other...actually they're standing around talking to us.

Like I said, creepy.

It also kills any momentum. Because the camera is the only thing that has any action to it. We see what he sees, following babes—rather obviously—every door-knob that is reached for (how exciting!), and only see our hero in the mirror. It doesn't help the actors, either. Montgomery might have been a great Marlowe—we just don't see it. And poor Audrey Totter—her character doesn't even make any sense. She whip-saws between emotions in a bi-polar performance, that when Marlowe's supposed to trust her, you just don't buy it...or buy him for doing it. The technique works against everything here. The only one who adapts well to it is Lloyd Nolan, but he'd already done an adaptation of Chandler's "The High Window" as the Marlowe stand-in, and already had the "cracking wise" patter down cold.

The thing is, POV can work. It works to a certain extent in Dark Passage, and  Jonathan Demme employed it amazingly well—and sparingly—in The Silence of the Lambs, where audience identification is only enhanced by our seeing the direct play of emotions across faces. Montgomery was an actor, and a good one, so it's amazing that he would choose to do this experiment rather than trust his own craft; it's a hard lesson to learn, but an easy one when you think about it—you can tell an audience anything you like, but to use the medium of movies to its best extent—you should show them.

Robert Montgomery as Phillip Marlowe in the only way we see him
(except when addressing the audience)—in a mirror. 

Two Smart People

Two Smart People (Jules Dassin, 1946) Jules Dassin's last job as a contract director for M-G-M (before tearing up the screen when he moved to B-movies at Universal) is a slight caper movie heavy on the relationship side of things; the tension comes not from the "will they pull it off" aspect so much as the "when does the betrayal happen" question. The screenplay is a collaboration between Ethel Hill (her last credit in a career that started in the silent era) and Leslie Charteris—who's most known for creating "The Saint." There are elements of that, but no halo's.

It follows two con-artists—Ace Connors (John Hodiak—he starred in Hitchcock's Lifeboat) and Ricki Woodner (Lucille Ball) who meet at a swanky Beverly Hill hotel. 

Well, they don't so much as collide; "clash" might be the better term. Both have their sights on a mark (the easily befuddled Lloyd Corrigan—but he had a history of playing con-men, as well) Ace has some oil futures he wants to sell to him, but Ricki has enough smart patter—and a deflecting "master-work"—to lure the investor to her side. That is, until Ace exposes it for a forgery, thus making those oil deeds a bit more tempting.

Make of it what you will two cats fighting over a ball of yarn, or a larcenous tennis match, but it puts Ricki and Ace on the same wavelength—one that has a lot of static on the line, but a certain simpatico frequency. Plus, Ace has a reputation—the rumor that he has half a million dollars in stolen bonds squirreled away somewhere, a nice little dividend if she can get her hands on it. But, there's another reason to get close to Ace—she's being threatened by Ace's former partner "Fly" Feletti (Elisha Cook Jr. in full weasel mode), who has a grudge against Ace and wants the bonds, as well. Already, the relationships, as they say, are "complicated."

And just a little slippery. With this couple of swindlers, you need someone you can depend on, so in walks Detective Bob Simms (Lloyd Nolan) who has absolutely no con to play, but does have have a job to do involving Ace; Simms is the cop investigating the stolen bonds and has the duty of escorting him to Sing Sing as part of the con's plea-deal for turning over evidence against Feletti (but not the bonds, the existence of which Ace won't even acknowledge). Simms is a practical man. He likes Ace (he's not a murderer, after all) and when Ace suggests they take the slow-road to Sing-Sing to visit old haunts and indulge in the finest meals that they don't provide on the menu at The Gray Bar Hotel. Simms is a straight arrow, but practical. An extended train-trip sounds like fun and they're in no hurry.

Trouble is, trains are public transportation; anybody can buy a ticket. So, Ace and Bob are surprised to find that Ricki has come along for the ride (and unbeknownst to them, so has Feletti), which sets up a dynamic where everybody is looking for the bonds that Ace has stashed. He won't betray their location and everybody wants to betray him. What's a con-artist to do? Sit back and enjoy the ride and make the best of it.

Hodiak looks like he's enjoying himself, and Nolan is a trooper. But, Ball, who since denounced the film as "a dog," looks none too happy. Oh, she goes through the motions, but you sense that there's a lip-twisting "Ewwww..." forthcoming in every scene. She had every right to be a bit brittle about it. Like, Dassin, this was going to be her last film before being released from her contract with the prestigious M-G-M. Despite the elaborate costumes she sports throughout the film, there was nothing flattering about the pink slip she'd be getting at the end of it.

I wonder whatever became of her? Well, one of the key technicians on the film was ex-pat cinematography master Karl Freund, who had learned enough from the German Expressionist era to highlight her cheekbones and make her look luminous despite the disadvantage of black-and-white doing nothing for her flaming red hair. Lucy must have taken notice and been appreciative, though. When she and husband Desi Arnaz launched Desilu Productions with their first series idea "I Love Lucy," they hired Freund to apply his same talents behind the camera and enhance the audience-friendly "3-camera technique" that would become of staple of those shows "filmed before a live audience."

Even career set-backs provide valuable lessons. Talk about "smart people."

The Street with No Name

The Street with No Name (William Keighley, 1948) Another of the odd docu-dramas Filmed in the real locations (but not better actors) that studio 20th Century Fox made in the 1940's with the FBI's full co-operation. As with the earlier example, The House on 92nd Street, Lloyd Nolan once again plays FBI inspector George Briggs who hires a new agent recruit to infiltrate a violent gangster racket run by one Alec Stiles (Richard Widmark, a year after tearing up the screen in Kiss of Death). Mark Stevens plays the mole, George Cordell, while a young John McIntire (wait a minute, he looks old in this one, too!) is his chief contact with the Feds. The Stiles gang is high on fashion, but low on smarts with the exception of Stiles, who's big on intricately worked out by-the-book schemes, secret rooms inside warehouses and likes to do a lot of whining about his gang, his moll, and probably the government, too, if he actually paid taxes. He takes a personal interest in Cordell (working under the alias of George Manley) and personally hires him as part of his mob.

The movie builds to a violent climax with anybody-who's-anybody in the cast all in the same place dodging bullets and daggers and hiding in all the spacious blackness that director Keighley and cinematographer Joe MacDonald (he shot My Darling Clementine, Call Northside 777, and Pickup on South Street) can offer. It's a minor noir, curious only for Widmark's early work and the spare elements of the truthiness at FBI Headquarters, which are less on display than The House on 92nd Street. This would be the last film of its type to have the full co-operation of the FBI until James Stewart starred in The FBI Story in 1959, and, of course the TV series "The F.B.I." starring Efrem Zimbalist, Jnr.

Well...almost. The script for The Street with No Name ended up being recycled for another, better film for Fox, which we'll talk about next week. 

The House on 92nd Street

The House on 92nd Street (Henry Hathaway, 1945) Another of those neo-realist films, filmed in the locations in which they had previously occurred. But this one goes a step further—except for the lead actors, everybody's a real FBI agent, and you can tell, as their line readings are merely that... line readings. ("Bob, let's get this over to the Cryptanalysis boys to see what they think." "O-kay, Wendell!") 

And the actors, mostly unknowns (you have heard of top-liner William Eythe, have you?), except for the always-natural Lloyd Nolan and the ever-officious Leo G. Carroll, stick out because they're at ease before the camera and have better hair-styles. Real surveillance footage of the German Embassy during the war is used in this story of "The Christopher Case"—based on the last words of a German courier who is run down in the street and his briefcase lifted before anybody notices. The agent's personal effects are gone over with every analytical equipment known to man at the time before it's determined that an appropriate plan of action is to be done with feet on pavement.

The FBI's Identification Department—Yikes!

 

A Quantico-trained double-agent (Eythe) "Bill Dietrich" is assigned to track a Nazi plot to discover the secrets of The Manhattan Project (or "Process 97," as its called in the movie--it was made in 1945, after all). All the German's (except for one FBI agent) squint threateningly and speak with German accents in full flower with nary a "w" un-v'd or an umlaut Americanized. Why, one even cross-dresses as a disguise—that one got by any censorship by FBI director  J. Edgar Hoover for some reason. It's a stunt-film, a propaganda document, an early film-noir (without the noir stylistics). And the blend of styles almost—almost—gives it a documentary feel. Henry Hathaway does some ingenious work making this all work together, at the cost of making the staged segments feel extremely staged in a D-budget sense.

At least, we are reassured at the end that "the FBI remains the implacable foe of enemies of the United States."

The Last Hunt

The Last Hunt (Richard Brooks, 1956) Writer-director Brooks followed up his urban drama Blackboard Jungle with this film far afield of JD's and ghetto schools, out into the wide open spaces. But people are still being buffaloed.

Stewart Granger plays Sandy McKenzie, a hunter sick of killing and looking to get out and do something else. He's approached by Charlie Gilson (Robert Taylor) with a business proposition—going into the buffalo pelt business. It's too tempting for the expert marksman (he has a sight on his rifle) to pass up. The beasts are a renewable resource, after all, and their hides bring in a sizable profit from the trading companies, guaranteeing that Sandy can retire. And they're so plentiful on the plains, the volume of them will make a quick killing in greenbacks, and they'll make a fine trading material for the natives to provide food, horses and supplies. There's no down-side. The two set out with the company of leathery skinner Woodfoot (Lloyd Nolan, given a chance to play something beyond his dependable world-weary professional) and half-native apprentice Jimmy O'Brien (Russ Tamblyn, whiter than white) to the wilds of what-will-soon-be South Dakota to make a considerable killing. 

Things go well for awhile.  It becomes a competition between the two hunters over who can drop the most beasts. And Gilson isn't content until he has wiped out entire herds. The movie encapsulates the wholesale slaughter of what used to constitute rivers of beef across the plains—an example of the profilgate short-sightedness of the western expansion, of the desire to make a fast buck, even while littering the landscape with corpses.

But the competitiveness turns to needling, more than knives get under skins, and the two hunters begin bickering, Gilson riding McKenzie and the other keeping his own simmering counsel. It's clear their motivations are incompatible. Things come to a head when Gilson's personal ambitions run afoul of anybody but himself to an increasing degree, first irritating Gilson by killing a local hunting party—he doesn't like the competition—and taking possession of the surviving woman (Debra Paget, whiter than white) and her son, and then horrifying the local natives by taking down and skinning a white buffalo, sacred to the tribe. 

Granger is properly (and typically, for his roles) stalwart, but Taylor gets the rare opportunity to play a genuine asshole, a portrayal he seems to relish as it's done with more energy than he exhibited in his more heroic roles in such films as Quo Vadis?, Ivanhoe, and Knights of the Round Table. He certainly doesn't try to hedge his character's avarice by trying to make him in any way sympathetic. It's also good to see Lloyd Nolan in a character part of some distance from his crusty, trusty Irishman (at least he's not cast as Native). It's Brooks at his best (despite the casting compromises), bringing a subtle message underneath the black and white morality on the surface.

Debra Paget's "Native Girl" doesn't even have a name.