In A Lonely Place
I began writing this review by taking live notes while watching it but it soon became apparent that I would really only be writing a synopsis and not a review. I would just be imparting the plot and not the feelings. It came in handy for noting the great dialogue but I'm hoping to write more than synopsis.
So I threw away most of what I wrote and will instead focus on the mood and tone of the film. The power of individual scenes as opposed to the mechanics of plot.
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The name of the film says it all. In A Lonely Place is where Bogey's character Dixon Steele lives. He's a screenwriter who hasn't had a hit for years. He's a cynic, a misanthrope, and prone to fits of rage and violence at perceived slights. What is unsaid is that Dix is certainly an alcoholic and probably suffering post-traumatic stress disorder as well. The very first scene confirms this.
Driving through Hollywood, Dix stops at a red light. A woman in the car next to him says hello, she was in his latest film of his, doesn't he remember her?
"I make it a point never to see pictures I write."
This upsets her husband, "You, stop bothering my wife!"
"You shouldn't have done it honey, no matter how much money that pig's got."
"Pull over to the curb."
"What's wrong with right here?!"
And with that the couple takes off and our film begins. This will be a role made for the public persona "Bogey" but with more depth. His violent behavior is not to be celebrated but pitied. This is the Bogart admired by Jean-Paul Belmondo in Breathless. And In A Lonely Place is a noir not of gangsters or femme fatales (there are none) but of tragedy. Of people doomed by succumbing to impulsive desires.
Dix then goes to a bar to meet his agent who would like him to adapt a popular romance novel. The director is there as well who gives Dix a hard time for his lack of success and enthusiasm for the project. Dix insults him by calling him a "popcorn salesman" but he can't deny that he's one as well. Then a hot-shot producer arrives and insults Dix's friend, a washed up old actor, and Dix starts a fight for real this time.
He then picks up a coat-check girl Mildred Atkinson who is reading the novel he's to adapt. As he has no intention of reading it, he asks her to come to his apartment and tell him all about it. She has a prior date with a boyfriend but calls it off for Dix. This is all quite understated for 1950 but it is implied that Dix has designs to have sex with her as well. But he soon finds her to be innocent and old-fashioned and once she has told him about the plot of the book (which she loves) he gives her money for a cab ride home.
The next morning (early) Dix is awoken by a knock on the door. It's his old army buddy Brub Nicholai who is now an LAPD detective. Dix is brought downtown and told that the girl, Mildred was found dead that morning. Instead of acting shocked or outraged, Dix takes it all with a cynic's shrug and then theorizes why she was killed. This is the habit of the screenwriter and does not go over well with Capt. Lochard who takes Dix lack of empathy for guilt or at least suspicion. The only other suspect is the boyfriend who Mildred broke off her date with to go to Dix's apartment.
To corroborate Dix's alibi, the police then call in Laurel Grey, a neighbor from the apartment building. She confirms that she saw Dix and Mildred arrive and then Mildred left by herself later. The police let Dix and Laurel go while Capt. Lochner tells Lt. Nicholai that he plans to put Dix under surveillance. Knowing that Nicholai is war buddies with Dix, he asks him to invite Dix to his home for dinner and try to see if he lets any hint of guilt slip.
In this scene we see shades of Camus' "The Stranger" and once again for 1950, a hint that the fictional LAPD of the film is not very far off from the real LAPD which has always had a reputation of trying to pin guilt upon innocent suspects.
At dinner, Brub talks about the details of case and Dix offers his ideas for how Mildred may have been murdered. He proposes that she was killed in a car and thrown from it. To illustrate this he has Brub and his wife role play the scene. They sit on two kitchen chairs, replicating the interior of a car. Dix directs them. He gives the killer's motivation of being a cuckold and nagged by Mildred for all his failures. His only course of action to stop her constant berating is to kill her. As Dix directs he gets excited as he pushes the scene to its climax, and this rubs off on Brub as he loses his control and grabs his wife by the neck. Only at the last minute does he compose himself and realize that he is hurting his wife as Dix looks on, engrossed in the action.
Here we begin to see that perhaps Dix is certainly not as sane as we had thought. His impulsive behavior and morbid use of role playing has brought out real violence between his two "actors". Bogart really turns it loose and the way he gets off on the strangulation is indeed very scary and morbid to see from the lead of Casablanca or Sabrina. This is unlike any populist role he has done before and a call back to his roots in crime noirs. What's astonishing is that he took on a role like this at this stage of his career. A modern equivalent may be Jack Nicholson when directed by Sean Penn (The Crossing Guard and The Pledge).
Sometime later he begins a relationship with Laurel Grey (played by director Nicholas Ray's real wife at the time, Gloria Grahame) who he treats with the devotion of a savior, which she is in a way by backing up his alibi to the police. In him, she sees someone as wounded as she is.
When professing his love for her, he is at once gentle, loving, desperate, and pathetic. He is overcome and we see the cynic begin to feel something close to love. It's an extraordinary display by Bogart and un-self-conscious in its honesty.
Dix and Laurel soon begin a dysfunctional and codependent relationship. Dix finally feels at peace with Laurel's love and devotion and has taken to working around the clock on his script adaptation. The opposite of Michel Piccoli and Brigitte Bardot in Godard's Contempt.
But nothing last forever.
As Dix begins to find success with writing his script, he begins to notice that the police are following him. One night on the town with Laurel they notice an undercover cop arrive which sends Dix into a rage. Another night while they are out with the Brub Nicholai, his wife Sylvia accidentally asks Laurel how her meeting with Capt. Lochner went. This is news to Dix and it again fills him with rage to think that Laurel is talking to the police behind his back.
They get in his car and he drives off, speeding out of control through the hills of Los Angeles. They almost hit another car and when they stop, Dix gets out and nearly beats the driver of the other car to death. As he raises a large rock over his head to throw at the unconscious driver, Laurel pulls him back to rationality. Here is another crack in Dix's self-control and an act that scares Laurel and begins to make her doubt his innocence and sanity.
When Dix asks her to marry him, she says yes not out of love but out of fear for what he'll do if she says no. Laurel begins making plans to flee and calls a travel agency to book her a ticket to New York. That night as they go out to "celebrate" their wedding plans Dix discovers that Laurel has given his rough draft of the script to his agent he has another outburst in public which sends Laurel running back to her apartment. There, Dix asks her why she left. She says she wanted to get home to pack for their wedding trip. As she locks herself in her room the phone rings and Dix answers it. It is the travel agency calling with her ticket to NYC. Enraged, Dix busts in and begins to strangle Laurel, angry that she would deceive him. Laurel breaks free and the phone rings again. This time it is the police calling to say that they have finally found the killer in the Mildred Atkinson case and that Dix is free of suspicion. Dix realizes that he has destroyed the love that he had sought for so long.
In A Lonely Place was the second and last film Bogart and Nicholas Ray made together. It seems that this was a personal film for both men. Originally Bogart wanted his wife Lauren Bacall to play Laurel but she was under contract to Warner Brothers at the time and could not do it. So Nicholas Ray has his wife, Gloria Grahame portray Laurel instead.
Ray and Grahame had a tempestuous relationship at best. Two years after making In A Lonely Place, Ray divorced Grahame after finding her in bed with his teen aged son Anthony Ray and eight years after that, Grahame married the younger Ray.
It is no mistake that Nicholas Ray was an influential director for many future generations of personal filmmakers. He was adored by the French and American New Wave directors, notably Jean-Luc Godard who has worked with the idea of combining love and work for almost his entire life as a filmmaker.
There are some aspects of the film that seem convenient or illogical. Dix seems to fall for Laurel at the drop of the dime, and that just may be the point. Laurel is complicit and willing to enter into this relationship as well. Several times in the film someone tries to warn her about Dix and his temper but she denies it exists. Only after Dix nearly kills someone does she begin to doubt her safety and plot a way out.
Once the story of Dix and Laurel takes off, the film loses some of its satirical or cynical edge in mocking Hollywood. This isn't detrimental to the quality of the film but it is missed since the scenes that do are razor sharp. At one point Mildred says that before she moved to Hollywood, she thought actors just made up their dialogue. Dix's response is priceless; they do, it just depends on how big of a star they are.
In A Lonely Place is also part of a trio of films made in 1950 that dealt with the culture of Hollywood and film making as integral parts of the story. The other two being All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard. All About Eve deals with the behind the scenes drama of rival actresses and is the more popular film as it's themes are more universal. Sunset Boulevard takes the drama of an out of demand actress succumbing to self delusion and insanity by trying to recover her career. It's a tour de force for director Billy Wilder and the casting of silent-film star Gloria Swanson is poignant. Her insanity is easily recognized compared to Dix codependency and bitter rage.
In A Lonely Place is the less popular of the three but no less influential. I'd say that this film was as influential on Godard as Sunset Boulevard was for David Lynch. Highly recommended.
