***Robert Montgomery and Audrey Totter in Lady in the Lake (1946)***

‘MGM presents a revolutionary motion picture. The most amazing since Talkies began! You and Robert Montgomery solve a murder mystery together!’

The 1947 movie ‘Lady in the Lake’ is based on the Raymond Chandler novel of the same name. In many ways it’s a typical film noir, following hard-boiled LA private detective Philip Marlowe as he navigates a world of murder, mystery and a missing woman. There are crooked cops, unreliable witnesses and an enchanting femme fatale; cynical double-crosses, brutal violence and a crisp, caustic script.

'My name is Marlowe, Philip Marlowe. Occupation: private detective. You know, somebody says, ‘Follow that guy’, so I follow him. Somebody says, ‘Find that female’, so I find her. And what do I get out of it? $10 a day and expenses. And if you think that buys a lot of fancy groceries these days, you're crazy.’

What distinguishes ‘Lady in the Lake’ is the decision of lead actor and first-time director Robert Montgomery to use point-of-view cinematography: the viewer experiences the entire drama from Marlowe’s perspective.

‘You’ll see it just as I saw it. You’ll meet the people. You’ll find the clues. And maybe you’ll solve it quick and maybe you won’t.’

The subjective camera tracks along corridors and up staircases. It looks to left and right to review the situation, and then focuses in on the key protagonists, who address us directly. We see a hand on the door handle as Marlowe enters a room; smoke billows before us as he lights a cigarette; and the leading lady even gives us a kiss. On a number of occasions we catch Marlowe’s reflection in the mirror. And when he is punched in the face, we tumble to the floor and everything goes woozy.

'Perhaps you'd better go home and play with your fingerprint collection.’

It was quite a challenge sustaining the point-of-view approach through the whole picture. To capture Marlowe’s walking movement the production team employed a new kind of dolly, with four independent wheels. A seat for Montgomery was attached at the front, so that the actors could respond to him. And for the fight scenes a camera with a flexible shoulder harness was used.

'I wonder how it would be to discuss this over a couple of ice cubes. Would you care to try?’
'Imagine you needing ice cubes.’

However, the production was problematic. Scenes planned for the lake of the title were cancelled because the technique proved difficult to execute outdoors. MGM studio bosses became frustrated that their expensive leading actor barely appeared on-screen, and insisted on the insertion of a number of awkward explanatory interludes where Marlowe reviews events afterwards in his office. They also demanded a happy ending.

‘Now what am I supposed to do? Reform? Become poor-but-honest? On what street corner would you like me to beat my tambourine?’

Watching the film today, initially the effect is intriguing. The characters seem to be addressing us personally. We feel involved in the action. We encounter the twists and turns of the plot as if we are detectives. We are Philip Marlowe!

But over the one hour and three quarters running time, the approach becomes a little wearing, somewhat artificial. It is as irritating as it is interesting.

'Please don't be so difficult to get along with. I need help.’
'Like I need four thumbs.'

***Robert Montgomery, Audrey Totter in Lady in the Lake (1946)***

In the course of my career in advertising we often developed commercials that employed a distinctive technique. We played scenes backwards, slowed them down, re-ordered them and mixed filmic styles. We explored original editing, unusual music, eccentric sound effects, and more besides.

Sometimes a fresh technique succeeded in prompting involvement; in drawing attention to the core idea. Sometimes it just got in the way. It was always a calculated risk.

Perhaps BBH’s most successful such experiment in my time there also involved point-of-view camerawork: Levi’s 1993 ad ‘Drugstore.’

We follow events from the perspective of a young man as he buys condoms from a general retailer and pops them in the watch-pocket of his 501s. He drives to his girlfriend’s house to take her on a date. When he knocks on her door, it is opened by the man who made the sale - her surprised, and concerned, father. The endline reads: 'Watch pocket created in 1873. Abused ever since. Levi’s 501. The Original Jean.’

What sets ‘Drugstore’ apart from other technique-based executions is the sheer quality of the filmmaking. Nick Worthington and John Gorse’s script had at its heart something of a Benny Hill gag. But they chose exceptional director Michel Gondry to shoot it with style and panache – with suggestions of ‘Grapes of Wrath’ and O Winston Link. And they selected a contemporary electronic soundtrack by Biosphere to give it an eerie, haunted quality. And to keep people on their toes, they also filmed a gender-switch version where the young woman buys the condoms.

In the midst of all this inventiveness the point-of-view camera technique enhances rather than obstructs the drama. And maybe that’s the lesson.

‘You stick your nose into my business and you’ll end up in an alley where the cat’s looking at you.’

So what became of ‘Lady in the Lake’?

Well, Chandler, whose own version of the script had been rejected, was unimpressed with the finished product and demanded that his name be removed from the credits. Critics were also largely underwhelmed. And Montgomery, who had been under contract with MGM since 1929, never made a film with them again.

Despite all this, the movie was a box-office success. And perhaps this was the biggest mystery of all.

'Put yourself in my place
If only for a day.
See if you can stand
The awful hurt I feel inside.
Put yourself in my place
For just a little while.
Live through the loneliness
The endless emptiness
I go through.
And when you lose a little sleep at night
Cause you ain't been treated right,
Then you know heartaches are sad.
Sitting by the telephone
Being left all alone,
Then you know why I'm feeling bad.
Put yourself in my place.’

The Elgins, 'Put Yourself in My Place’ (Holland–Dozier–Holland)

No. 442

‘Do you love my daughter?’
‘Any guy that'd fall in love with your daughter ought to have his head examined.’
‘Now that's an evasion. I asked you a simple question. Do you love her?’
‘Yes! But don't hold that against me, I'm a little screwy myself!’

In 1934’s ‘It Happened One Night’ Claudette Colbert plays Ellie Andrews, a society heiress who runs away from her father to rejoin her lover in New York. Chased by dad’s detectives, she travels incognito, cross-country on a bus. She reluctantly accepts help from Peter Warne, an out-of-work reporter, played by Clark Gable. It’s a charming, wisecracking comedy, with a sweet romance at its centre and random discourses at its edges: on dunking biscuits, hitching lifts and how to ride piggy-back.

Unintended Consequences

At one stage on their protracted bus journey together Ellie and Peter stop off at a roadside hotel and are obliged to share a room. Peter suspends a blanket between their beds, a ‘Wall of Jericho’ to preserve their decency. Whilst rehearsing for the scene in which they prepare for bed, Gable found it difficult to get through his quick-fire lines and undress at the same time. He determined to shoot the sequence without his undershirt so as to make it flow more easily. This subsequently led to a dramatic decline in undershirt sales across America and Gable was blamed forever after for crippling the underwear industry.

Creative enterprises generate any number of unintended consequences. In another scene of ‘It Happened One Night’ Gable chatted while chewing on a raw carrot. This inspired the characterisation of Bugs Bunny. Despite our best endeavours to make our creative outputs more scientific and predictable, they have an infinite capacity to surprise us - with any number of random repercussions, copycat crazes, and accidental asides.

Poor Judges of Our Own Work

Clark Gable didn’t originally want to appear in ‘It Happened One Night’. He was loaned to Columbia by MGM as punishment for his affair with Joan Crawford. His first words when he appeared on set were: ‘Let’s get this over with.’

Claudette Colbert didn’t want to appear in the film either. She had not enjoyed working with director Frank Capra on their previous movie together and she only signed up when promised double her normal fee and a short four-week production. On completing the film, Colbert confided to a friend: ‘I’ve just finished the worst picture I’ve ever made.’

So confident was Colbert that her performance wouldn’t win an Oscar that she decided not to attend the ceremony. She had to be summoned back from a train station at the last moment to receive her award.

In the event ‘It Happened One Night’ became the first film to win the Oscar ‘Grand Slam’ of Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director and Screenplay. It was Columbia’s biggest commercial success to-date and kicked off a boom in Screwball Comedies.

To Colbert’s and Gable’s credit, they gave ‘It Happened One Night’ their best performances, despite their complete lack of faith in its qualities.

Creative people are not necessarily good at predicting winners or judging their own work. I recall one team refusing to put their name to a Levi’s ad they had written because it had been adjusted in the final edit. They changed their minds later when the film won bucket-loads of awards.

We all have opinions and perspectives on the Agencies where we will thrive, the accounts that will be fruitful for us, the scripts that will be award winners. But we never really know for sure. My first job was as a Qualitative Market Researcher and the very last project I worked on back in 1989 was an Audi study for BBH. This chance event led to me being hired by BBH and staying there for 25 years.

We can’t be too calculating with our careers, because our careers have a mind of their own. Sometimes we need to set aside our subjective assessments; to familiarise ourselves with Fickle Fate. We need to leave a little space for luck.

Leaving a Little Space for Luck

Frank Capra certainly seems to have been happy to accommodate a certain amount of luck and spontaneity in his creative process, as is evident from his description of his freewheeling approach on ‘It Happened One Night.’

‘We made the picture really quickly - four weeks. We stumbled through it; we laughed our way through it. And this goes to show you how much luck and timing and being in the right place at the right time means in show business; how sometimes no preparation at all is better than all the preparation in the world…You can never out-guess this thing called creativity. It happens in the strangest places and under the strangest of circumstances.’

The legendary screenwriter William Goldman went further still. He was convinced that knowledge and certainty are alien to the creative industry:

‘Nobody knows anything…Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.’

I’m well aware that genius requires 10,000 hours of practice and so forth; that Thomas Jefferson said: ‘I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.’ But I would still maintain that creative enterprises shouldn’t practice away spontaneity; that they should learn to accommodate uncertainty. Without chance we wouldn’t have Pacemakers, Penicillin or Play-Doh; X Rays, microwave ovens or Cadbury’s Flake.

Do Interesting Things…

If luck and good fortune play such an important part in creativity, should we give up on preparation and planning altogether? Should we set aside forecasting and prediction? Should we just abandon ourselves to chance?

That would be taking things too far. It’s the responsibility of leadership to create the conditions for success, and in a creative business those conditions include, amongst other things, serendipity, spontaneity and happy accident. I think it is possible to pursue a planned course while leaving oneself open to opportunity; alert to possibilities. Sir John Hegarty would often say: ‘Do interesting things and interesting things happen to you.’ I’m sure that’s good advice.

Some fifty years after the release of ‘It Happened One Night’ Hegarty thought it would be interesting to have the hero of his laundrette-set Levi’s ad strip down to his boxer shorts. This rather stunned a culture hitherto wedded to Y-fronts and sparked a huge new craze for boxer shorts. The underwear industry finally had something to be thankful for.

No. 122

Lady in the Lake: Distinctive Film Techniques Can Either Enhance or Obstruct

Clark Gable’s Vest: ‘Do Interesting Things and Interesting Things Happen to You.’