Lady in the Lake/1947/MGM/103 min.
It’s Christmastime and most self-respecting femme fatales are shopping, decorating and wooing men a tad younger and slimmer than Santa. In “Lady in the Lake,” from the Raymond Chandler novel, our leading lady is Adrienne Fromsett (Audrey Totter), a quintessential ’40s career girl and gold-digger. Adrienne’s an executive editor in a publishing company with designs on her boss Derace Kingsby (Leon Ames).
Sifting through the pile of manuscripts on her desk, she comes across a submission from private eye Philip Marlowe (Robert Montgomery, who also directed the movie). She’s lukewarm about Marlowe’s writing but she calls him into her office for a chat anyway – she wants to hire him to find her boss’s wife Chrystal so she can have the boss all to herself.
As dead bodies begin to pile up, Marlowe must put his literary aspirations on hold to focus on solving murders. “Lady in the Lake” is famous for Montgomery’s decision to tell the story from Marlowe’s point of view, using a subjective/first-person camera for the entire movie.
From FNB readers