The Lady in the Lake (1947)

MGM, 1947. Directed by Robert Montgomery. Starring Robert Montgomery, Audrey Totter, Leon Ames, Lloyd Nolan, and Tom Tully.

Critics usually cite The Lady in the Lake as the first movie to use a subjective point of view shot as its central narrative device, and more often than not, they praise the experiment. In our opinion, undeservedly so. Although it is true that it isn’t without its interesting moments, the film clearly fails in its innovative attempt, which soon grows old and boring. When it was first released, MGM pushed The Lady in the Lake as a groundbreaking interactive movie, one that gave the viewer the chance to experience the events exactly at the same time and with the same intensity as the protagonist. As you can see here on the left, the original poster called the film "the most amazing since talkies began," also underscoring the fact that it was the spectator that solved the murder mystery along with the main character. Yet, even back in 1947, the actual result must have come across as a disappointment.

Based on a Raymond Chandler novel, the picture casts Robert Montgomery (also acting as director) as private eye Phillip Marlowe, who gets involved in a murder plot that turns out to be rather unsatisfying. We have access to the events in the story from Marlowe’s point of view, and as a result, we hardly ever get to see Montgomery, who stays literally behind the camera. It’s true that plot never was Chandler’s forte; he was much more adept at recreating the atmosphere and cityscape of Los Angeles in the first half of the twentieth century. Yet because of Montgomery’s choice of the subjective point of view device, the movie doesn’t capture any of that atmosphere. The gimmick impairs the narrative, which becomes too slow and repetitive: at times the camera moves so slowly that it makes it look as though Marlowe were walking in slow motion. Perhaps the only positive aspect of this narrative device lies in the fact that Montgomery stays off-camera throughout most of the movie, and we only get to hear him talk. In our opinion, Montgomery isn’t as believable in the role of Marlowe as, say, Robert Mitchum would have been, and certainly much less powerful than Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep, an infinitely more effective entry in the Marlowe saga.

The Lady in the Lake, then, is the perfect example of a movie constructed around an idea that may have sounded interesting in principle but that doesn’t work at all once it’s implemented. The narrative device used by Montgomery doesn’t help advance the plot, and as a consequence, the finished product suffers greatly, precisely because most movies of the noir cycle are so strongly plot-based. Innovation should always be welcome when it serves a clearly defined purpose, but in The Lady in the Lake, we frankly fail to understand such a purpose.

Anton&Erin.

The Shop around the Corner (1940)

MGM, 1940. Directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Starring James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut, and Felix Bressart.

Remade as In the Good Old Summertime, a 1949 musical starring Van Johnson and Judy Garland, and then brought into the internet age as You've Got Mail (1998), a far inferior movie with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, The Shop around the Corner is a delightful screenplay by Samson Raphaelson (the writer of The Jazz Singer) based on the Miklos Laszlo play Parfumerie. And in the hands of director Ernst Lubitsch, it turns into a timeless classic.

The action takes place in 1930s Budapest, although it's clearly set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, and the plot is a sort of tragicomedy of errors and mistaken identities, full of witty dialogues and Lubitsch's usual flair for tenderness. At first sight, The Shop around the Corner simply looks like a typical romantic comedy, but it'll only take a little scratching of its surface to discover a great deal of hidden tensions that, in spite of its Hungarian setting, bring us back to 1930s America. For instance, Klara Novak's desperation as she insistently looks for a job and Pirovitch's comments about his family's financial struggles underscore the precarious economy of the working class in the thirties. In this respect, we can hear echoes of Rouben Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight, a musical that enacts a displacement of the Great Depression by setting its story in France and bringing in elements of the fairytale tradition.

Yet Lubitsch's main concern in The Shop around the Corner doesn't seem to lie merely in social commentary; he seems much more interested in human relations and in the effects of work on the interactions between people. Thus, store owner Hugo Matuschek becomes a vital character, as he finds in old age that devoting his whole life and effort to his business hasn't brought him real happiness, but rather that his life has been wasted in an endless search for economic growth. Lubitsch seems to hint at the fact that redemption is still possible for Matuschek, though, but only by means of an awareness of his place in the world and a reevaluation of his priorities in life.

Lubitsch places Matuschek in sharp contrast with the young Alfred Kralik, his oldest employee and, in many ways, his opposite. As is usually the case in a Lubitsch film, even though humor plays an important role in the contrast between both characters, the effect is rather serious. As the movie unfolds, we realize that Kralik's approach to life isn't the same as Matuschek's, that his priorities are different. The purely romantic element of the movie, that is, the relationship established between Kralik and Klara, is another instance of Lubitsch's attempt to go beyond plot-based facts: it becomes a statement about lack of communication and the influence of appearances on human relations. In spite of their daily interactions at the store where they work, both characters need to don a mask and create a world of make-believe where they pretend to be what they really aren't in order to approach and get to understand each other.

In short, The Shop around the Corner tells a delightful story that is sometimes funny, sometimes bittersweet, but always tender and deeply moving. The movie is brought to life by an outstanding cast led by James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and Frank Morgan, whose performances are flawless. And, of course, the genius of Lubitsch's directing, with his very elegant treatment of the subject matter and the characters, arguably makes it one of our favorite films of all time.

Anton&Erin.

His Girl Friday (1940)

Columbia, 1940. Directed by Howard Hawks. Starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, and Cliff Edwards.

Based on the 1928 play The Front Page, by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, the story told in His Girl Friday had already been made into a movie under its original title in 1931, directed by Lewis Milestone and starring Adolphe Menjou, Pat O’Brien, and Mary Brian. It focused on two newspapermen, one of which (O’Brien) wanted to get married and leave the business only to find the opposition of the other one (Menjou), who set about to change his plans. When Howard Hawks decided to remake the movie in 1940, he introduced an important change: he turned O’Brien’s character into female reporter Hildy Johnson (Rosalind Russell), the ex-wife of newspaper owner Walter Burns (Cary Grant). This time it’s Hildy that has marriage on her mind—she intends to marry insurance agent Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy)—and this element spices up the premise of the film because Walter is still in love with her and is determined to win her back.

In our opinion, the movie is one of the best comedies of the 1940s, full of fast-paced, often overlapping dialogue that attempts to depict the frenzy, as well as the hollowness, of the newspaper business. In this film, journalists don’t try to inform their readership; rather, they invent and exaggerate their stories. Theirs is a world of lies and ornate language, and in their search for sensationalism, fiction usually prevails over fact. Satire on the newspaper world and the shady relations between journalists and crooked politicians is a main element of the original play, yet in His Girl Friday, it seems to take a back seat to the frantic relationship between Hildy, Walter, and Bruce. Indeed, the film is satirical, but the perfectly crafted characters played by Grant, Russell, and Bellamy often overshadow this satire. Social and political criticism is explicit, yet rather light and usually hidden among absurd bits and pieces of blurted dialogue, and this certainly makes the movie extremely enjoyable.

The three featured stars offer solid performances: Russell shines as an energetic woman who has the know-how to survive in a traditionally male-dominated world; Grant is delightful as a tough, double-crossing newspaper owner with a quick wit and a knack for distorting and exaggerating reality; and Bellamy plays a role that has always been tailor-made for him: that of a nice, law-abiding fellow who simply can’t fit in a world ruled by deceit. The cast also includes Gene Lockhart as the nitwit sheriff and Cliff Edwards (a.k.a. Ukulele Ike) as one of the cynical, cold-blooded reporters always on the lookout for a sensational story at no matter what price. In short, His Girl Friday is arguably the best version of The Front Page, skillfully directed by Hawks, who certainly worked hard in order to keep all the noisy, seemingly chaotic dialogue under control. The story never gets out of hand, though, and will have you grinning from beginning to end.

Anton&Erin.

The Lady from Shanghai (1947)

Columbia, 1947. Directed by Orson Welles. Starring Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, Everett Sloane, and Glenn Anders

To say that Orson Welles was ahead of his time sounds so much like an understatement nowadays that it may well fall into the category of a widely accepted stereotype. Based on Sherwood King's novel If I Die before I Wake (which Anton took the time to read and actually turned out to be much better than he expected), and graced by fantastic performances by Welles, his then-wife Rita Hayworth, and two fabulous actors such as Everett Sloane and Glenn Anders, The Lady from Shanghai bears witness to this. Welles landed this project merely by chance, when his career as a director was faltering, and he needed money for other endeavors. But no matter, because the movie represents one of those instances when fate and genius come together, and the result is pure and simple greatness.

In The Lady from Shanghai, Welles undertakes a highly interesting generic revision: this is indeed a film noir, yet a very atypical one at that. The movie plays around with most elements of the genre (murder, shady characters, the figure of a femme fatale) but the plot is so elaborate and leaves so many questions unanswered that we often find ourselves completely at sea as spectators. We constantly have the feeling that Welles is playing with us, building up our expectations in one scene merely to shatter them completely in the next one. The characters add to the overall sense of indeterminacy of the film. All of them are complex characters, but their complexity lies mainly in the fact that their development throughout the storyline is conveyed by means of brushstrokes. They are like puppets in Welles's hands, and we only get a very superficial idea of what is hidden behind their masks. For instance, when at some point Grisby (Glenn Anders) stares directly at the camera with a grin on his face and says to Michael (Orson Welles), "Remember that you were only doing target practice," we can't help but feel unsettled because Grisby seems to be winking at us, as though he were announcing that he knows something that we don't.

The plot also moves along unevenly, sometimes almost tentatively, and quite often the events in the story don't seem to be clearly connected. This might be due in part to the fact that Welles's original cut of the movie ran over an hour longer than the final version, which clocks in at roughly ninety minutes. Welles was made to reduce the length of the film against his will, and that definitely influences the way in which the story is told. However, The Lady from Shanghai is also a wonderful example of Welles's highly personal use of the camera: the movie is full of bizarre shots, improbable angles, and strange, almost grotesque settings. This unsettling atmosphere provokes a feeling of estrangement in the viewer, which climaxes in that powerful final scene at the funhouse, a directorial tour de force that embodies what The Lady from Shanghai is ultimately about. As each character pulls the trigger and smashes one another's image on the mirrors, Welles reminds us that, both within the movie and in the outside world, things are hardly ever what they seem.

Although it wasn't well received when it was first released, in our opinion, The Lady from Shanghai is a masterpiece. Like most of Welles's movies, it requires several viewings in order to make sense out of its intricacies. However, don't feel frustrated if you see it dozens of times and you still feel that you can't find convincing answers for all your questions. In most of Welles's movies, greatness isn't necessarily planned; it simply happens.

Anton&Erin.

The Body Snatcher (1945)

RKO, 1945. Directed by Robert Wise. Starring Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Henry Daniell, and Russell Wade.

It's sometimes hard to dissociate Boris Karloff from his career-making role as Frankenstein. But we believe that there is much more to Karloff as an actor than just his portrayal of the famous monster, and The Body Snatcher is one of the best examples of that. Not to be mistaken with the sci-fi classic The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), this movie is based on a tale by Robert Louis Stevenson and is one of the early works by the great director Robert Wise. It stars Karloff as a shady, cynical man who unearths dead bodies and sells them to a local doctor who uses them for his experiments.

The film is an excellent study of the relationship established between these two characters, and Karloff's performance is, in our opinion, one of the very best of his long career. Bela Lugosi, another actor who was almost always typecast in horror movies after his portrayal of Count Dracula, has a minor role in The Body Snatcher. He and Karloff apparently disliked each other, although they worked side by side in several films, and here they only have a couple of scenes together. Yet the main scene featuring the two of them is undoubtedly one of the highlights of the movie, a powerful, unforgettable clash of two Titans.

Director Robert Wise achieves a very fine contrast of light and shadow throughout the picture, and most of the creepiest scenes are handled with elegance and subtlety. Don't expect a low-quality B-movie like some others that Karloff and Lugosi made; this one is definitely the cream of the crop.

Anton&Erin.

Road to Morocco (1942)

Paramount, 1942. Directed by David Butler. Starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Dorothy Lamour, and Anthony Quinn.

The series of Road to... movies, starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Dorothy Lamour, won't go down in film history for their well-made plots. In fact, according to Crosby himself in his 1953 autobiography Call Me Lucky, many of the scenes were almost completely ad-libbed, and the plots --if such a word can actually be used to define them-- were very loosely strung together. Yet there's something very charming about watching Bing and Bob improvise: there's an almost timeless quality to seeing two old buddies having a good time, and that's precisely what makes these movies so enjoyable.

On this one --our favorite Road to... release along with Road to Rio (1947)-- Bing and Bob are stowaways on the North African coast who get a camel ride to Morocco, where they will get involved in many a funny situation as they cross paths with the Princess of Karameesh (Dorothy Lamour) and her suitor (Anthony Quinn). Along the way there will be some crooning on great songs like the title track and the big hit "Moonlight Becomes You," as well as plenty of joking and fooling around on the part of Der Bingle and Hope, whose interplay throughout the picture is absolutely hilarious.

Moreover, the film oozes with metafictional elements, constantly showing its awareness of the artifice involved in movie-making and exploiting the fact that the audience was well acquainted with Crosby and Hope's public personas. There's really no doubt that in this series of films, Bing and Bob are always playing themselves, no matter if their characters have different names, but that actually adds to the overall charm of the movie. In our opinion, with such magnificent artists as Bing Crosby and Bob Hope, nonchalance works every time.

Anton&Erin.