What Movie Did I See Part Of--Camera POV Was A Character

Earlier today was at the hospital w/my wife (she’ll be fine) and semi-watched a few minutes of a B/W movie (no sound on the set). The characters addrressed the camera as a character, but in what I saw we never left this subjective POV to reveal who (or what) the character was.

I believe I may have spotted a young Lauren Bacall driving an old panel van gabbing away with this unseen person.

From what I saw, it seemes like something I might like to seek out. Looked to be late-1940s/early-50s.

Anybody…?

Sir Rhosis

Lady in the Lake? Was Robert Montgomery in it?

No Bacall, though.

I don’t recall seeing him, but I really only know Montgomery from the boxer goes to heaven and forty years later Warren Beatty follows him movie. After Bacall, “Camera” talked to a cabbie, then went to a hotel room and talked to some guy there. I think a pair of hands (the hands of the camera character) handed the guy in the hotel a saxaphone.

Any help?

Sir Rhosis

May not have been Bacall. I’ll look at the link now.

SR

Well, hard to tell, but that sounds like it, I guess. I only saw maybe ten minutes of it, and wasn’t paying super close attention. There was a scene where we do see somebody with a completely bandaged head that looked to be filmed in regular omniscient (or whatever the word is) camerawork.

At that moment, the deoctor called and that was all I saw.

Sir Rhosis

According to TCM, what you saw was the 1947 movie Dark Passage, which used the same gimmick as Lady in the Lake.

I’m guessing Dark Passage. It’s got Becall, it’s got Bogie, and it’s playing in rotation on TCM right now, says IMDb.

The early scenes are all character POV of a con who breaks out of San Quentin. Becall and a friendly cabbie take the con to a plastic surgeon and after the bandages are removed the con is Bogie. I don’t remember any saxophone, but it’s been decades since I’ve seen it.

Thanks, that’s it. It may not have been a sax, as I said I wasn’t giving it more than compartmental attention, but I thought I remembered him handing something with “keys” to the guy in the hotel. Hell, I may have been thinking of something else in yet another corner of my mind as I saw the scene.

Sir Rhosis