Robert Montgomery had made the film "Lady in the Lake" (1946) which also uses a "subjective camera" technique, in which the viewer sees the action through the protagonist's eyes. This technique was used in 1927 in France by Abel Gance for "Napoléon" and by the director Rouben Mamoulian for the first five minutes of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1931). Film critic Hal Erikson believes "Dark Passage" does a better job at using this point-of-view technique, writing, "The first hour or so of "Dark Passage" does the same thing—and the results are far more successful than anything seen in Montgomery's film."