Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 26-October-08
Spoiler Rating: Medium

Lady in the Lake (1947)

Is the appeal of classic "hard-boiled" detectives that the audience can relate to them as not-too-illustrious heroes? Like many other dopes, these men act tough on the outside but are suckers on the inside, easy prey for bad judgment, manipulation, and the lure of a lost cause. But they try to work for justice and preserve a semblance of dignity, and therein their heroism lies.

Whatever the psychology behind the genre, Robert Montgomery really wants his audience to relate to the detective in Lady in the Lake. As director, he tells the story from the point of view of private dick Phillip Marlowe, to whom, as leading man, he lends a voice. We only see him during brief monologues that bookend the movie and a few glimpses in mirrors in between. For the most part we look through Marlowe's eyes at the shady characters he meets after a pulp magazine editor (Audrey Totter) hires him to find her boss' missing wife. Inevitably, the editor is a tough broad with great legs who veers from flirtatious to venomous in a swift readjustment of her eyelids. She and Marlowe bicker like step-siblings but develop a mutual passion through jeers and put-downs like "Oh, why don't you just look beautiful?"

The action unfolds at Christmastime, allowing Montgomery to make wry comparisons between goodwill towards men and a rising body count. The suspects include a hot-tempered police lieutenant (Lloyd Nolan), the lieutenant's long-lost girlfriend (Jayne Meadows), the husband of the missing woman (Leon Ames), and of course Marlowe's client herself. The romantic title refers to a corpse dredged from a lake far from the city which seems to have a connection to the case. Marlowe has decent instincts but lousy luck and reflexes, getting knocked out several times, arrested, driven off the road, and batted about by the vixen who got him into this mess. We experience it all as he does, only with a soundtrack and without the reek of cigarettes.

The first-person narrative works fairly well despite robbing the viewer of the sight of the star director's handsome face. It helps to build suspense and offers the opportunity to walk in somebody else's gumshoe.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.