Themes: Dangerous Attraction, Haunted By the Past, Age Disparity Romance
Main Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Robert Warwick, Jeff Donnell, Art Smith, Martha Stewart
Release Year: 1950
Country: US
Run Time: 93 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
A haunting work of stark confessionalism disguised as a taut noir thriller, In a Lonely Place -- Nicholas Ray's bleak, desperate tale of fear and self-loathing in Hollywood -- remains one of the filmmaker's greatest and most deeply resonant features. It stars Humphrey Bogart as Dixon Steele, a fading screenwriter suffering from creative burnout; hired to adapt a best-selling novel, instead of reading the book itself he asks the hat-check girl (Martha Stewart) at his favorite nightclub to simply tell him the plot. The morning after, the girl is found brutally murdered, and Steele is the police's prime suspect; however, the would-be starlet across the way, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), provides him with a solid alibi, and they soon begin a romance in spite of Gray's lingering concerns that the troubled, violent Steele might just be a killer after all. During production, Ray's real-life marriage to co-star Grahame began to crumble, and his own vulnerability and disillusionment clearly inform the picture; the brooding, bitter Steele -- a role ideally suited to Bogart's wounded romanticism -- is plainly a doppelganger for Ray himself (the site of his first Hollywood apartment is even employed as the set for Steele's home), and the film's unflinching examination of the character's disintegration makes for uniquely compelling viewing. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
Review
Produced by Humphrey Bogart's Santana Productions, Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950) uses a murder mystery to delve into the questionable side of Hollywood violence and the potentially dangerous turmoil beneath Bogart's tough surface. Bogart's troubling performance as a man who seems to enjoy imagining murders of women a bit too much lends an eerie edge to his relationship with Gloria Grahame's starlet Laurel Gray, rendering Dix an all-too-believable suspect in another woman's murder. Even as Andrew Solt's screenplay suggests possible reasons for Dix's isolation and distress, it eschews pat conclusions about Dix's "artistic temperament" as a screenwriter. Ray's jittery, ominous, film noir style instead suggests that Dix's potential violence comes from within, with Hollywood as both an outlet and an excuse for lethal male fantasies. Whether seen as a reflection of Ray's then-disintegrating marriage to the put-upon Grahame or as an interrogation of Bogart's cool Philip Marlowe/Sam Spade persona, In a Lonely Place presents one of the darkest portraits of Hollywood in a period haunted by the Communist blacklist and the studios' financial uncertainty. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
Morris Ankrum - Lloyd Barnes; William Ching - Ted Barton; Steven Geray - Paul; Hadda Brooks - Singer; Alice Talton - Frances Randolph; Jack Reynolds - Henry Kesler; Ruth Warren - Effie; Ruth Gillette - Martha; Guy Beach - Swan; Lewis Howard - Junior; David Bond - Dr. Richards; Laura Brooks; Charles Cane - Person; Arno Frey - Joe; Billy Gray - Young Boy; Myron Healey - Post Office Clerk; Robert Lowell - Airline Clerk; Frank Marlowe - Person; John Mitchum - Person; Michael Romanoff - Himself; Cosmo Sardo - Bartender; June Vincent - Person; Allen Pinson - Person; Davis Roberts - Person; Oliver Cross - Person; Hazel Boyne - Person; Michael Lally - Person; Jack Santoro - Person; Pat Barton - 2nd Hatcheck Girl; Joy Hallward - Person; Jack Jahries - Officer; Evelyn Underwood; George Davis - Waiter
Credit
Robert A. Peterson - Art Director, Henry S. Kesler - Associate Producer, Rodney Amateau - Consultant/advisor, Jean Louis - Costume Designer, Earl Bellamy - First Assistant Director, Nicholas Ray - Director, Viola Lawrence - Editor, George Antheil - Composer (Music Score), Morris W. Stoloff - Musical Direction/Supervision, Clay Campbell - Makeup, Burnett Guffey - Cinematographer, Robert Lord - Producer, William Kiernan - Set Designer, Edmund H. North - Screenwriter, Andrew Solt - Screenwriter, Dorothy B. Hughes - Short Story Author
