The Brasher Doubloon
| The Brasher Doubloon | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | John Brahm |
| Produced by | Robert Bassler |
| Screenplay by | Dorothy Bennett Leonard Praskins |
| Based on | the novel The High Window by Raymond Chandler |
| Starring |
George Montgomery Nancy Guild Conrad Janis |
| Music by | David Buttolph |
| Cinematography | Lloyd Ahern |
| Edited by | Harry Reynolds |
| Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
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Release date
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Running time
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72 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Brasher Doubloon (known in the UK as The High Window) is a 1947 crime film noir directed by John Brahm and based on the novel The High Window by Raymond Chandler. The film features George Montgomery, Nancy Guild and Conrad Janis.
Fred MacMurray, Victor Mature, and Dana Andrews were all mentioned at different times as having been cast as Philip Marlowe in the film before the studio settled on George Montgomery appearing in the final film of his 20th Century Fox contract.
The plot revolves around a man being pushed out of a high window by a woman while the incident was caught on film.
The movie is technically a remake of Time to Kill, a 1942 film which adapted The High Window as a Michael Shayne adventure starring Lloyd Nolan.
Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a wealthy widow, Elizabeth Murdock, to find a stolen coin called the Brasher Doubloon.
Marlowe ends up in the middle of a much more complicated case, one that involves blackmail and murder, forcing him to deal with a number of strange individuals. That includes Merle Davis, a deranged secretary to Murdock, whose own role in the matter is considerably more sinister than it seems.
When the film was released, The New York Times film critic panned the film, writing, "... Chandler's popular 'shamus' and, we might add, his efforts to recover the stolen brasher doubloon, a rare coin with a violent history, is the least of his exploits to date. Perhaps this is due equally to a pedestrian adaptation of Mr. Chandler's novel, The High Window, to the plodding and conventional direction accorded the film by John Brahm, and to the lack of conviction in George Montgomery's interpretation of Marlowe."
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Wikipedia