1946 Directed by Robert Montgomery
Private eye Phillip Marlowe wants to get out of the detective racket and into crime writing. But when he's called to the office of editor Adrienne Fromsett, it's not to talk about his story ideas — she wants him to locate the missing wife of her boss, Mr. Kingsby. The assignment quickly becomes complicated when bodies start turning up.
Robert Montgomery Audrey Totter Lloyd Nolan Tom Tully Leon Ames Jayne Meadows Dick Simmons Morris Ankrum Lila Leeds William Roberts Kathleen Lockhart Ellay Mort Ellen Ross Eddie Acuff Charles Bradstreet David Cavendish Wheaton Chambers Roger Cole Frank Dae Jack Davis John Webb Dillion Ralph Dunn Budd Fine John Gallaudet Nina Garson Sherry Hall Cy Kendall Ann Lawrence George Magrill Show All…
La Dame du Lac, こちゅうのおんな, Die Dame im See, La Dama del lago, La dama en el lago, La Dame du lac, Asszony a tóban, Una donna nel lago, 湖中の女, Леди в озере, 湖上艳尸
USANR
UK
USANR
UK
USA
I really like this movie a lot! Haters gonna hate.
I love the Christmas theme. I love Audrey Totter. I love that Robert Montgomery took quite a risk shooting this film from the POV of the character.
Robert Montgomery never gets heralded nearly enough for the incredible risks he took as an actor and as a director. Case in point, his directorial debut is a film shot entirely in POV, and that alone is worth the price of admission. It is technically very impressive, but even more so as Montgomery’s debut as a director. Furthermore, the lack of vanity on Montgomery’s part that he is the star of this film but appears for less than three minutes combined is spectacular. In short, Robert Montgomery deserves far more credit for being a risk taker in both his acting and directing but unfortunately he is largely forgotten in today’s society.
A weird one, weird enough to keep my interest despite its many flaws. Montgomery plays Philip Marlowe or more correctly does a weird Philip Marlowe tough guy voice over off camera and occasionally pops up in a mirror looking very uncomfortable.
The movie is all shot POV style which together with the delivery of the Chandler soundbytes and the way all the actors are a bit thrown by acting straigh to camera gives the whole thing the feel of watching someone play a computer adventure and choosing multichoice dialogue options.
Montgomery isn't really anyone's idea of Marlowe, indeed he seems to be channelling better versions in the voice over, and the movie seems to be half poking fun at chandlers style but there is still something worth seeing here.
You certainly can't fault Lady in the Lake for being one Philip Marlowe film that attempts to stand out from other, better adaptations of Raymond Chandler's works but the decision by director/star Robert Montgomery to do that by shooting the entire film in a first-person perspective is one that never really feels more than a clumsy gimmick. Coming out the same year as The Big Sleep, it's apparent that that POV really is the only notable thing about it since even compared to other mystery noirs, this movie has a supremely messy and convoluted plot. There are so many characters running around and the way it tells the story is suspect to say the least with random stretches left offscreen…
It's Christmas Eve and private dick Philip Marlowe is working overtime. He's out to solve the mystery of the missing wife of a media magnate when the body of another woman washes ashore in a lake. Surely he didn't have this on his wishlist. Regardless, he's made his list, he's checking it twice and he's gonna find out who's naughty or nice.
Robert Montgomery directs Robert Montgomery as Marlowe in this adaptation of Raymond Chandler's fourth novel. Produced the same year that Humphrey Bogart starred in The Big Sleep, The Lady in the Lake not only takes a page from Chandler, it also predicts another Bogey tale to come with Dark Passage. Montgomery tells this twisty tale from a first-person…
Lady in the Lake is a fascinating film as it is a terrible one. The subjective style is well known and very awkward. There's something very thrilling about the scenes that show Marlowe at work, Montgomery exercise comes alive when it just gives itself to it. Yet, Lady in the Lake has to function as a drama and while it does has a perfectly fine Raymond Chandler novel as basis, Montgomery has no idea how to dramatize it under these terms. When Lady in the Lake has to advance the plot or play around motivations it stumbles badly, most scenes with people talking to Marlowe are very clumsy staged (Totter in particular suffers a lot from this). The other limiting…
Very gimmicky Marlowe detective story, but a gimmick I loved! Almost like a 'Point and click' adventure.... except without any pointing or clicking. Okay, that might not have been the best analogy, but you get what I mean when you see it.
I see the phrase "ambitious failure" has been coined for this film a few times, and although I totally see where they're coming from, I was having too much fun for any of its flaws to register strongly. The choice of narrative style -- adapting a hard-boiled detective (Philip Marlowe) novel by Raymond Chandler completely in a first-person style, saved for a few times that Marlowe addresses the audience directly -- seems to gain divisive reactions. For me, the biggest flaw is that it renders the romance aspect of the story completely uninvolving. Audrey Totter gives a great performance and sells her part convincingly, but without Montgomery to play off physically on screen, their chemistry is never built to a…
Beyond the fun gimmick (rarely used to its full extent) and the crackling Chandlerisms that pepper the dialogue, this is kinda nothing, and about 20 minutes too long... but still, a fun little Christmas noir. A lot of clever pans and mirror shots.
this had me straight up dozing off, and i had such a hard time focusing. reminded me of some grim fandango type point and click adventure puzzle, a genre of game i have no patience or mind for, just like i had no patience for this movie. its just mfing npcs talking to u for an interminable length of time. being embodied in the corporeal form of an awful male private eye really makes the underlying misogyny of so much noir really obvious and impossible to ignore
Summer of Scam: The June / July Crime Season 2
Without the POV gimmick that it's best known for, I don't think anybody would have paid much interest in Lady in the Lake.
Otherwise it's a pretty formulaic noir with no great surprises. Maybe that's the reason they decided to make it like this in the first place, knowing full well there really wasn't enough here to make it stand out from the tons of other crime mysteries being made at that time. It was a pretty good decision, actually.
There's nothing actually wrong with the story here, it's just recognisable in every single way. That's not really a problem with me, I don't mind a film raking over the…
