LADY IN THE LAKE (1947)

Webster’s defines “gimmick” as “an ingenious or novel device, scheme, or stratagem, esp. one designed to attract attention or increase appeal,” and more negatively as “a concealed, usually devious aspect or feature of something, as a plan or deal: An offer that good must have a gimmick in it somewhere.” It is perhaps this later usage that has given the word a derogatory flavor. But a good gimmick, especially in a movie, can be the spark that gives a film life.

Some gimmicks become mainstream. At one point, sound was a gimmick (“The Jazz Singer”), color was a gimmick (“The Phantom of the Opera,” “Becky Sharp”), hand-held cameras were a gimmick and rapid paced editing was a gimmick. Then there are gimmicks that are rarer, or have more limited life spans. 3-D was such a gimmick, with a short life cycle in the 1950’s before it was resurrected in the 21st century. Telling a story in reverse is an interesting seldom used gimmick (“Betrayal,” “Memento”). Giving a film the appearance of being filmed in a continuous take (“Rope”), or shooting an entire film in a continuous take ("Russian Ark") are others. Then there were the films of producer William Castle, who was famous for inserting gimmicks into his films, their promotion and their exhibition, electrifying theater seats (“The Tingler”), flying glow-in-the-dark skeletons over the audience (“House on Haunted Hill”) and providing special glasses that allowed the viewer to see on-screen ghosts (“13 Ghosts”).

In 1940, when Orson Welles was first lured to Hollywood by an extraordinary contract with RKO studios, giving him unprecedented artistic control of his films, he toyed with the notion of an intriguing gimmick. Welles had for years produced radio dramas that were largely told in the first person. He thought this might translate to film as well. What if an entire film was seen from the main character’s perspective, through that character’s eyes? What if the entire film was a series of point-of-view shots. This is the approach he adopted as he moved forward planning an ambitious adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” wherein “eye = I.” Budgetary restrictions lead to the project being abandoned, making the way for the production of “Citizen Kane.”


Eventually a filmmaker and studio took on this daunting narrative and technical challenge. The studio, which I imagine did not quite know what it was getting itself into, was MGM, and the filmmaker was actor Robert Montgomery. The film was an adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s “Lady in the Lake.” Montgomery was making his credited directorial debut while playing the lead role of Philip Marlow, Private Detective, literally from behind the camera. Never before had almost an entire film been photographed with a subjective camera, no mean feat in 1947 when cameras were large, bulky, unwieldy devices, and before the invention of steady-cams of even the widespread use of hand-held cameras. It is even to this day an almost unique narrative device. Portions of other movies, even lengthy sequences, had been shot from a character’s unbroken perspective before, most notably in Rouben Mamoulian's "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." And some television episodes experimented with the technique in the years to follow. But I do not believe there has ever been another mainstream film to adopt the technique so thoroughly and consistently. The MGM publicity department played this to the hilt in their trailer for the movie.

 

So this was a film that, even though the script and performances are wildly uneven, and even though it was disowned as an adaptation by Chandler, stayed with its viewers as something unique and original, something they had never seen before, a trait always attractive to my Dad, and why “Lady in the Lake” was one of my Dad’s favorite movies.

See “Lady in the Lake” on Turner Classic Movies this Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 6:30 am EST (5:30 am CST) and on January 20, 2010 at 8 am EST (7 am CST).

Buy Lady in the Lake at Amazon.com