In a Lonely Place (1950) Reviews

• Bogart and Grahame Are Great

  drednm2005-07-04

  Very adult film about a surly Hollywood writer, a would be actress, and a murder. Among the very best Bogart performances, yet this film is practically unknown. Top notch acting across the board. Bogart and Grahame are a terrific team (she is the designing actress), but also good are Frank Lovejoy, Jeff Donnell (as his wife), Martha Stewart (no not that one) as the murder victim, Art Smith as the agent, and Robert Warwick (just wonderful) as the washed-up actor. Everything in the story revolves around Hollywood and movie making, but this is NOT really a film about Hollywood; it's a murder mystery. Great script is full of memorable lines, and all the supporting actors are sharp. Ruth Warren is funny as the maid, and Ruth Gillette is really spooky as the masseuse. Carl Benton Reid is the Lieutenant, and William Ching another officer. But the center is Bogart's harsh, unrelenting character. His Dixon Steele must rank with his best characters. And we never get to know him, nor is there any apology for his toughness. He seems almost psychotic--very rare for the hero of the 1950s movie. This also rates as one of Grahame's best performances. A truly unique Hollywood movie all round. In a Lonely Place still rates as an undiscovered gem.

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• One of Nicholas Ray's best movies with brilliant performances from Bogart and Grahame.

  Infofreak2004-02-06

  Nicholas Ray is a director who has almost been forgotten these days, despite making brilliant movies like 'They Live By Night', 'On Dangerous Ground', 'Johnny Guitar' and 'Rebel Without A Cause', and numbering Martin Scorsese and Wim Wenders among his fans (the latter even gave him a small role in his 'The American Friend'). 'In A Lonely Place' could be Ray's best. It's a fascinating movie that mixes drama, suspense and romance in a very interesting way. You could call it Noir I suppose, but it's a very difficult movie to tie down. Humphrey Bogart plays a bitter, hard drinking and frequently violent screen writer who becomes a murder suspect when a young girl (Martha Stewart) is killed. Gloria Grahame ('Crossfire', 'The Big Set Up') is a neighbour who supplies him with an alibi. This odd way of meeting leads into a romance. At first everything is wonderful, and Bogart is even writing again, but bit by bit Grahame starts to see his dark side and begins to fear him, even suspecting that he may have been involved in the murder after all. I don't think I've ever seen Bogart better. It's a terrific performance, and while his character can be charming at times he's also surprisingly unlikeable and intense (we are told he broke an old girlfriend's nose, for example. Imagine Mel Gibson or Brad Pitt doing that in a movie today and still being the romantic lead!). Grahame pulls off a difficult role too, being torn between love and terror. They both make a great team. Such a pity they never worked together after this. I also liked Frank Lovejoy ('House Of Wax', 'The Hitch-Hiker') who plays Bogart's cop buddy. 'In A Lonely Place' is a movie not to be overlooked. I thought it was superb entertainment.

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• Disturbing & Important

  fowler12001-02-20

  For all the praise film-noir is lavished with (quite a lot of it valid), the majority of it relies on convention as much as the standard white-picket-fence, happy-ending 'family' film does: just invert the cliches and bathe them in deep-focus shadows. While this movie, on its surface, resembles the classic-style film noir of DOUBLE INDEMNITY, it's a whole different animal. No calculating evil females or tough guys masking hearts of gold populate IN A LONELY PLACE. It's a much more wrenching and powerfully disturbing film because the murder that draws the protagonists together turns out to be of peripheral importance, while the love story between Humphrey Bogart's troubled screenwriter and Gloria Grahame's B-actress spins inexorably towards damnation completely on its own power. The basic story has him a suspect in a killing and her in love with him yet unsure of his innocence, but director Nicholas Ray stages the proceedings so that WE see it's not the murder that disturbs her but her own conviction that his self-destructive and volatile nature will destroy them both. Yet, Ray never takes the easy way out of having Bogart turn monster on her. You care deeply about these people, hoping desperately (as Bogart's agent does in the film) that some transforming moment will come that will spare these people and allow their deeply felt love to flourish and heal them both, even as the evidence before your own eyes tells you there ain't no way. For 1950 -hell, for any year- such an unsentimental and uncompromising treatment of a tragic adult relationship is a terrible wonder to behold. The shadows suffusing this excellent film come not from UFA-influenced lighting but from moral and spiritual desolation, the death throes of old Hollywood, the coming of McCarthyism and the Black Dahlia murder of 1947. But most of all, they're projected from within the characters themselves. The finest work of Bogart, Grahame and Ray. Special note should be taken of Ray and Grahame, whose own deteriorating relationship formed the template for the doomed lovers; for them, this film is an act of great courage. Bogart himself has taken elements of all his previous romantic loners and blended them with the sour pigments of Fred C Dobbs; as the star and executive producer, his performance is unflinching in its honesty, and as fearless as Grahame and Ray. See this movie.

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• Classic Bogart, classic script, classic noir

  CountZaroff2004-03-11

  This is one of my all time favourite films, and (alongside the obvious - Casablanca, Maltese Falcon etc) my favourite Bogart. The script is smart, witty and cynical, just like a typical Bogart character. But in this film Bogart plays probably his darkest character. In some of the scenes with Gloria Graeme he's at his smooth, wisecracking, slightly irritable best, but in the moments where the anger and the fog of despair descends he is a more threatening character than in any of his other leading man roles. The cynical, darker aspects of this film just go to highlight how few contemporary films are prepared to be so bleak. Despite the fact that the plot is ostensibly a 'did he do it?' crime story, this is largely inconsequential to the psychological character and relationship study that is the central concern of the film. If you like a cracking script with sharp performances, with all kinds of deep psychological observations on love and loneliness to be read into it, in the best noir tradition, this is the film for you.

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• Essential Bogie

  skymovies2005-09-07

  Bogart is at his uncompromisingly dark best as the Hollywood writer whose temper leads to accusations of murder and conflicted relationships. By turns charming, cold, romantic and remorseful, Dix Steele is as unpredictable a character as Bogie has ever played. He shows no emotion on learning that Mildred - the innocent he has just met - has been killed, and those who know him accept his violent nature as simply part of the Steele package. But thanks to the skill of Bogie and director Ray, the audience never entirely loses sympathy for him. The moments of tenderness he shows to his alibi-turned-lover Laurel (an ethereal Gloria Grahame; imagine Hope Davis glammed-up for the 50s) alternate with fits of anger to turn their relationship into that of a tragic poem. In A Lonely Place is film noir that focuses on romance rather than crime. The reasons for Mildred's murder are never satisfactorily made clear, but it doesn't really matter. The movie asks whether love and trust are earned by what a person says or what they do. And in the end, actions speak louder than words.

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