Film Noir Special Series: Lady in the Lake (1947)

There are two men who must always be mentioned during a credible examination of film noir: Raymond Chandler and Philip Marlowe. Even if you haven't been aware of their existence, they've been there, lurking behind the covers and the shadows of your pop culture consciousness; especially if you've ever wandered into the sleep-deprived, whiskeys and whiskeys world of Humphrey Bogart. The character that threw him into vast critical acclaim and into the national consciousness was, of course, Sam Spade from the The Maltese Falcon. In the great geneology of hardboiled private detectives, there was Sam Spade and then there was Phillip Marlowe.

And frankly, forget Sam Spade - Marlowe is the man of this hour. The white knight of private detectives who was smart enough to realize that dames were just dames: they didn't need any special attention, unless it was to get information out of them. Chandler made Marlowe the man of the brutal, witty quip. Firing off snapcrackers of mean-spirited brilliance, Marlowe became more than just a literary character. He became the very essence of childhood fantasies, as well as the occasional adult flight of fancy. Who wouldn't want to be the man with the fast words darting out of his lips faster than he can exhale cigarette smoke? Who wouldn't want to be the man who all the dames liked?

But it's not simply for the creation of Marlowe that Chandler is remembered. Besides giving life to one of the most enduring characters in literary history, he also helped to defy the set boundaries of literature. Even today - shit, even more so today than ever - there is a huge distinction between high art and, well, pulp. Dime store novels, though perfectly capable of engaging those of us who aren't smoking pipes at universities, aren't exactly the precious metals graduate-level dissertations are made of. And yet the enduring popularity of Chandler's body of work, including the novel which yielded Robert Montgomery's 1947 film adaptation of Lady in the Lake, is a testament to the simple power of talented writing.

The film itself, on the other hand - and despite the excellent material from which it draws - is an overall artistic failure. Montgomery decided to film his rendition of Lady in the Lake entirely in the first person perspective, and while the possibility of puffs of smoke, lips, glasses, telephone receivers, and guns swinging suddenly into view with the immediacy and spontaneity of real life sounds like a thrilling experiment, the way it plays out in practice is less than impressive.

Article Author: Modern Pea Pod

Find more music, film and pop culture criticism at The Modern Pea Pod.

Visit Modern Pea Pod's author page — Modern Pea Pod's Blog