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Lady in the Lake (1946)

Director: Robert Montgomery

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From Time Out Film Guide

Suffering by comparison with The Big Sleep (made a year earlier), this celebrated Chandler adaptation is stubbornly loopy: shot entirely with subjective camera, it lets the audience see the world through Marlowe's eyes. Hired to track down someone's hated wife, you stumble on a dead body, and as Audrey Totter offers you her lips, darkness fills the screen: you have closed your eyes. Even novelty items like mysterious puffs of smoke from invisible cigarettes cannot disguise the high irritation factor in what Chandler himself described as 'a cheap Hollywood trick'. It really needed the magnificent panache of an Orson Welles, who had planned a '40s version of Heart of Darkness - about another Marlowe - in the same subjective style. DMacp.

Author: DMacp 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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Cast & crew

Director: Robert Montgomery

Producer: George Haight

Cast: Robert Montgomery, Audrey Totter, Lloyd Nolan, Leon Ames, Tom Tully, Jayne Meadows, Dick Simmons, Lila Leeds full cast

Genre(s): Thrillers

Duration: 103 mins


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