1947 seems to have been a year for some interesting (albeit not entirely successful) experiments by Hollywood movie makers using a subjective camera (or first-person viewpoint) to tell a story.  Movie audiences got a pair of dramas in the form of actor-turned-director Robert Montgomery’s Lady in the Lake, (shot a year earlier, but released in ’47) based on the popular Raymond Chandler novel and Dark Passage, Delmer Daves’ adaptation of a terminally so-so David Goodis novel.  I was going to do this column on the former film at first, but a coin toss brings you Bogie and Bacall in the more interesting, but tremendously flawed film. Don’t get me wrong here – both movies have their issues, but both are worth viewing for a few reasons including their unique use of POV storytelling. That and you have to go with a film that doesn’t show the face of its lead for about an hour, but works in some lovely shots of a San Francisco that’s long gone thanks to “progress” in transportation and probably even earthquake proofing…

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