#718: In A Lonely Place

In a Lonely Place

Nicholas Ray
Initial release: June 19, 1950 (UK)

Humphrey Bogart only ever played one kind of character: himself. Sometimes, watching his films, you'd get a version that was more of a bastard, sometimes you'd get one who was almost cuddly, but the real deal was, in all honesty, pretty sleazy, yet likeable. In a Lonely Place could almost be a biography about the man, his temperament, his charm, and that lingering sense that underneath the surface is a broken, angry man desperate for love but unsure how to get it.

Where the likes of Billy Wilder and Raoul Walsh were the premier film noir directors of the 1940s, for the ensuing decade it was Nicholas Ray (among others) whom the torch was passed to. While he didn't direct very many noirs (preferring to work in a variety of film genres, especially westerns,) In A Lonely Place is very probably his magnum opus in the dark arena of cynical post-war crime dramas. It goes a little something like this: Dixon Steele (what a name!) is a screenwriter who hasn't had a successful script since before the war; coinciding with that is his notorious temper. Charming yet unpredictable, with a taste for violence lurking under a sardonic persona, he is the first suspect when a young woman he was last seen with turns up dead on a lonely road. His neighbor, an aspiring actress named Laurel Gray, is his only alibi, as she pretty clearly saw the victim leave Dixon's apartment alone. Dixon and Laurel eventually strike up a relationship, but Dixon's behavior grows more erratic as the case wears on, and it becomes clear that whether Dixon killed that girl or not, he might just have the heart of a murderer after all.

Though the Bogie/Bacall marriage was the talk of Hollywood, the role of Laurel actually went to Gloria Grahame, Ray's then-wife. In a curious case of life imitating art, their marriage was on the rocks, with the two of them ultimately splitting up during the production of the film. They kept the breakup secret, with Ray sleeping in a dressing room under the pretense of working on script revisions (of which there were many.) Ray in turn made Grahame sign a contract saying she was to be under Ray's control while on set without complaint. No wonder they divorced in 1952.

In a Lonely Place is pitch black noir, a portrait of a complex, lonely man unable to make lasting personal connections. Steele destroys his relationship with Laurel; his one best friend, who once served under him during the war and now a police detective, admits that Steele was a bit strange but an excellent commanding officer, but it's clear that Steele left the battlefield a changed man, broken inside and unable to control his temper or his drinking. Steele will fight just about anybody, from randos on the street to disrespectful young punks in a bar. It parallels all too well the real Bogart, who was known for explosive violence and getting thrown out of popular establishments once or twice a week. One story has it that film producer Mark Hellinger took Bogart to someplace on Sunset Boulevard and the doorman quickly locked the door on seeing Bogart. "Bogart is barred," he said. "Creates disturbances." Hellinger tried to argue that Bogart would behave, not knowing that Bogart was fighting the parking lot attendants right behind him. It's not hard to see how that Bogart could so easily translate into the weird angry dude who encourages his friend to strangle their wife in re-enactment of a murder and nearly does someone's head in with a rock after a car accident that he caused.

People sometimes take film noir as a genre for granted, envisioning it as little more than a hurricane of clichés, but in actuality it's a pretty varied genre. If there's a single unifying characteristic, it's the overwhelming cynicism, a dark view of human nature, particularly in the wake of World War II and the crushing fatalism of the atomic age. Dixon Steele is what peak noir antiheroes look like: deeply flawed, even broken, maybe innocent of the worst sort of crimes but certainly no stranger to the gutter of humanity, struggling to get through the day like all the rest of us but never truly in reach of a better tomorrow. In a Lonely Place is truth in advertising; the film is a deep abyss of societal alienation in which there is no light.

-june❤