Film Noir Classic Collection, Vol. 3 (DVD)
APPROX. 0 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1946 - MPA RATING: NR
" ...the movie is different, and one can hardly say that Lady in the Lake is anything less than entertaining for most of its running time.
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The movie begins with a set of title cards removed one at a time while a Christmas carol plays in the background. The final card reveals a gun beneath it. It's a nice bit of irony and sets the tone for the rest of the film. Then we find Marlowe facing us and narrating the story in flashback. That in itself was also somewhat unconventional for the day--an actor speaking directly to the audience.
He tells us he was working on "the case of the lady in the lake," explains that we will see everything he saw, exactly as he saw it, and dares us to follow the clues, just as he followed them.
The plot involves a magazine publisher, Derace Kingsby (Leon Ames), whose wife has gone missing, and whose assistant, Adrienne Fromsett (Audrey Totter), hires Marlowe to find her (but without letting the boss know because she believes the wife has run off with another man). Marlowe is onto her at once, figuring she just wants to get the wife into trouble in order to marry the boss herself. But he plays along; he cynical enough to realize that a paycheck is a paycheck.
Once underway, the plot involves multiple murders, beatings (mostly Marlowe's getting the worse end of it), back stabbing, jealousy, and a boatload of suspicious characters; and as the bodies pile up, it isn't long before one's head is spinning. Yet it's all in good, old-fashioned, hard-boiled, private-eye story fun.
Among the supporting characters are Ms. Fromsett herself, demanding, conniving, perhaps ruthless; Mr. Kingsby, publisher of lurid mystery and horror novels; Lt. DeGarmot (Lloyd Nolan), a tough cop with something of a personal involvement in the case; Police Captain Kane (Tom Tully), a seasoned veteran of the force; Chris Lavery (Dick Simmons), a presumed Southern gentleman who may be anything but; and Mildred Haveland (Jane Meadows), an enigmatic presence always hanging about on the periphery of events.
Without seeing his face most of the time, Marlowe's snappy repartee and quips do tend to sound a bit silly in isolation--too literary and too consciously clever for their own good. "Imagine your needing ice cubes," he says to the cold-blooded Ms. Fromsett. Moreover, the first-person angle gets tiresome after a while. Nevertheless, the movie is different, and one can hardly say that "Lady in the Lake" is anything less than entertaining for most of its running time.
Video:
The print that Warner Bros. obtained for "Lady in the Lake" looks good for its age, but it is clear that the studio did little to clean it up. Therefore, you will find more grain and more age spots throughout it than you might expect. I confess I have been so spoiled by WB's touching up and restoring so many of their early films that this one looks a but shabby to me. Still, it is not bad, and maybe the studio felt a few signs of age and grain would contribute to the movie's atmosphere.
Audio:
There is little to say about the audio in "Lady in the Lake" except that it is a typical monaural of the day, reproduced here via Dolby Digital 1.0 processing. There is not much range to the frequency response or dynamics, and a low-level but audible hiss accompanies the sound. About two minutes into the film one forgets about such things.
Extras:
All of the movies in the set contain the same kinds of extras: audio commentaries and trailers. In the case of "Lady in the Lake," the commentary is by film historians Alain Silver and James Ursini, who have done this kind of thing before. They are knowledgeable, affable, and fairly amusing, too. I enjoyed their exchange of opinions, reflections, and descriptions. In addition, there are twenty-two scene selections (but no chapter insert); a theatrical trailer; English and French spoken languages; and English, French, and Spanish subtitles.
The set houses each film in its own thin, plastic case, and it also includes the excellent 2006, bonus-disc documentary, "Film Noir: Bringing Darkness to Light." The documentary is divided into thirteen chapters and lasts a total of sixty-seven minutes. Actors, filmmakers, film historians, screenwriters, composers, and novelists contribute their thoughts on the subject of noir, along with a plentitude of film clips to illustrate their points. After listening to all of these folks give their own definitions of the subject, I think it comes down to what actor/director Sidney Pollock says: The noir style is "very elusive." What's more, the bonus disc includes five episodes from the old "Crime Does Not Pay" series: "Women in Hiding," "You the People," Forbidden Passage," "A Gun in His Hand," and "The Luckiest Guy in the World." Each short subject lasts a little over twenty minutes.
Parting Thoughts:
Fans of older films never had it so good as they do today, with things like this third volume of noir titles from Warner Bros. Although I enjoyed to varying degrees all of the films in the set, as I've said, I think it's "Lady in the Lake" that deserves greatest consideration. It was Robert Montgomery's noble experiment not only in a noir style (to which the director probably didn't know he was contributing), but in avant-garde filmmaking that would eventually lead to an unexpected result: the video-game first-person shooter. Plus, fans of "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang" might want to see some of things being parodied in that much-later film. Who'da thunk.
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