In a Lonely Place (1950)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

In a Lonely Place (1950) – N. Ray

Humphrey Bogart stars as deeply flawed screenwriter, Dixon Steele, who starts the film as a murder suspect after convincing a hat-check girl to come home with him to tell him the story of the novel he has agreed to translate to the screen, which she has read but he can’t be bothered to.  She turns up dead later, after leaving his bungalow. When the cops pick him up, he’s flip and disinterested. Luckily, his new next door neighbour Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame) saw the girl leave Dix’s apartment and offers him an alibi.  Having been brought together in this way, Dix and Laurel fall in love – and she supports him as he gets down to the business of screenwriting, looking for his first hit in many years. But he’s a temperamental character with a quick fuse and Bogart knows how to turn off the charm, showing Dix’s neurotic, ugly, and bullying side. The police continue to treat him as a suspect and even Laurel starts to worry about him. Director Nicholas Ray manages this ambiguity beautifully, drawing out believably complex portrayals from Bogart and Grahame (Ray’s soon-to-be ex-wife) as their characters’ emotions become dysregulated, potentially due to the pressure of the police investigation on them. But deep down, the audience (and all the characters in the film) realises that there is something not right about Dix Steele – even if he didn’t murder the girl, he probably could have and maybe he might even have enjoyed it. Gray is probably right to be concerned. Yet we want things to work out for them, for love to triumph despite personal defects. Apparently, the original novel and screenplay ended very differently from the version that we see on the screen; both would have been dark noir conclusions but the deeply sad ending that we do get probably lingers longer and has more reverberating implications for real people then the crime that would have ended the picture. Instead, we’re left to contemplate people stuck “in a lonely place” and what factors, controllable or uncontrollable, have lead them there. A masterpiece.