The Brasher Doubloon Reviews

Don't let the obscurity of the title scare you away. A stolen gold coin brings Raymond Chandler's hard-boiled private dick Philip Marlowe (Montgomery) into the employ of an eccentric and wealthy widow. While on the trail of the coin, he stumbles into blackmail and murder and suffers a savage beating at the hands of Kortner, one of the weird creatures populating Chandler's off-center world. Finally, while trying to straighten out a blackmail scheme involving Bates's mad secretary, Guild--who is tied to her employer out of fear of being implicated in the murder of Bates's husband--Montgomery puts the pieces of an illogical and complicated puzzle together to discover that Bates herself is the murderer and the thief of the doubloon. In carrying over Chandler's complex story to the screen (the fourth and last of his novels to be put into film), the producers have presented a watered-down version of the author's tough prose and cast an actor in the central role who is wooden, uneasy in his lines, and cute and boyish instead of portraying a steel-eyed gumshoe loaded with dry wit and self-confidence. Guild comes off effectively as the bewildered secretary in an overwritten part, and the rest of the cast performs adequately in stock roles. Most distinguished is Kortner, a veteran German actor and playwright who was widely known in Europe before WW II for his unconventional interpretations of the classics--another great artist Hitler lost to America. In spite of its faults, THE BRASHER DOUBLOON achieves film noir status in its many low-key images, its dense and threatening backgrounds, and tricks of dialog and grotesque characterizations that distinguish a film noir from an ordinary thriller.