--Raymond Chandler, "The Lady in the Lake", Chapter Six.
I'm not a big fan of Robert Montgomery's portrayal of Phillip Marlowe in "The Lady in The Lake" (from a 1943 book, the film was released in 1947).
Part of the reason is Montgomery himself--he's a good actor in other roles, but he seems to be a bit too conventional around the edges to be Chandler's main protagonist.
The objective-camera technique, which takes up about 95 percent of the film, is another good reason to be weary of this movie if you see it at your local DVD rental spot or on Turner Classic Movies. "The Camera Acts!" the trailer for the film proclaims. Well, its a good gimmick for a scene or two, but for almost a whole feature film! No, I don't think so.
While this is no clasic film, there are a few good things. Lloyd Nolan plays a good surly copper, film noir veteran Audrey Trotter is fine as a hard-as-nails magazine editor/love interest, and a young Jayne Meadows (the future Mrs. Steve Allen) plays a ingenue who starts out nice and ends up a "femme fatale".
There was another Marlowe film, this time starring George Montgomery (no relation), a B-movie star who helmed Marlowe in something called "The Brasher Doubloon" (1948), a adaptation of Chandler's interesting third Marlowe novel, "The High Window". I haven't seen that film and will withhold judgement.
In the late forties, actors Van Heflin (in 1947) and later Gerald Mohr played Marlowe on radio shows on different networks. Phillip Marlowe was also a television series starring Philip Carey in 1958-9 ( a series Chandler himself helped promote, although he didn't write any of the scripts).
And then in 1969, Philip Marlowe returned to the big screen in "Marlowe" starring the affable James Garner in a story about the detective helping a naive Kansas farmgirl find her lost brother, who got mixed up in some sordid doings in sunny LA. This film is enjoyable and Garner is funny and confident, but he doesn't really have a Chandler/Marlowe vibe, perhaps because Garner doesn't convey the urbanness the character needs. It's really more like a early episode of one of my favorite television shows, Garner's "The Rockford Files" which didn't premiere until five years after this movie came out. Rita Moreno is also in the cast, in a very good role as a stripper. She and Garner have good chemistry together, as the second part of this clip shows:
Sorry it seemed a bit corny and over acted for my taste
ReplyDeleteI agree the trailer for "Lady in the Lake" is corny. Are you referring to "Marlowe" as well?
ReplyDeleteThis is what I liked about the Batman films myself Doug, plus the pop art, slapstick and satire of course.
ReplyDeleteThe opening titles to The Lady In The Lake would have had me on the edge of my seat when I was kid.
I haven't read Chandler but I enjoyed the prose at the top of the post. Interesting stuff also about the development of the detective story and it's portrayal on film and TV....these American cultural artifacts are widespread globally but especially in the English speaking world.
Deconstructing their evolution is tantamount to stripping away the layers of these cultural icons to reveal the original charcoal sketch under the gilt.
My learning curve is a 90 degree bend here Doug thanks again for the history.
I always thought they wrapped everything up to tidy. Nothing was ever left unsaid
ReplyDeleteI was surprised, when I got around to reading my first bio of the man, to find that Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), although born in Chicago and seemingly American to the core, was actually schooled in England and attended Dulwich College. His most earnest desire as a young man was to be a poet, and this was the source of his earliest efforts along with some journalism for "The Westminster Gazette" and "The Spectator".
ReplyDeleteApparently he didn't excell enough as a poet and later claimed that as a journalist he would invariably get lost when sent out on to cover an event. Still a young man, he even quit a promising position with the Civil Service (at "The Admiralty" no less!) and sailed back to America in 1912 with his mother.
He returned a few years later with the Canadian Army, late in 1917, nearly getting himself killed at the front. He was training to be a pilot for the RAF when the war ended.
And back to America again:
It was only at 45 years of age that he began writing detective fiction, after he lost a job as an oil executive in Los Angeles due to either the depths of the Great Depression or his own personal alcoholism, take your pick. Work at pulp detective magazines led to novels which led to Hollywood. He did not, however, allow his new line of work to deflect from his commitment to the earnest consumption of adult beverages. He once marched into an office at Paramount Studios to apologize to his film producer/employer at the time, an "old school" type of the American grade, before he went on a total blotto bender---obstensibly in order finish a screenplay.
I mention all this because it surprises me most about him as a writer that his early British background doesn't appear in his fiction at all--he writes like a man who bears none of the marks of a "gentleman" with the education in the classics he must have received. Of course, the education is submerged there in the writing, I suppose, but I can't really detect it.
And it's hard to imagine our "Marlowe"--a nod to Joseph Conrad of course--in a 'bowler hat and 'brolly combo", scribbling a bit of poetry while on the way across Westminster Bridge in a double-decker bus. (Unless he was tailing a blackmailer and needed a bit of sartorial cover.)
Thanks for the additional info Doug, it seems as if Mr Chandler was in Britain but not really of it, which is undoubtedly the best way to be.... if you ask me. Come to think of it Menwith Hill has a similar role today.
ReplyDeleteHow did he end up in the Canadian army?.... like Marlowe himself he seems to have worked for 'clients' where the interest in the particular case was more important than the financial rewards...or at least thats how I read it in the absence of your well researched grasp on this subject. He was undoubtedly a great writer.
According to Frank McShane, one of Chandler's biographers, he enlisted in the the Canadian Army after the US entered the Great War because the Canadians offered a monthly stipend for his mother, for whom he was the sole support.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett of "Maltese Falcon" fame both lived in San Francisco around the time war broke out in Europe. Hammett was a real-life detective, or "operative" with the Pickerton Agency. Chandler for whatever reason was doing odd jobs, including stringing tennis rackets in a factory south of Market Street. Interestingly, Hammett, who only met Chandler once in the 1930's, stopped writing detective fiction at about the same time Chandler started his own writng career with the pulp magazines.
Despite serving in both World Wars, Hammett later spent a year in jail because he refused to name names to Congressional authorities during the "Un-American" Witch Hunts of the late 40's-50's. (I'm sure Hammett would have some interesting things to say about Menwith Hill.)
Chandler was indeed very picky about the "cases" he worked on, at least when he established himself as a popular writer. His realtionship with Sir Alfred Hitchcock, for one, on the screenplay for "Strangers on a Train" (1952) is as good an example as any of two creative men NOT getting along well as you can find. I'll have to blog on that one a bit later on when I can see "Strangers" again.