In a Lonely Place
I have always had more of a personal connection with the title of this 1950 drama than with the movie itself, although the film is one of the great Hollywood films. You see, in 1999, years before I ever saw this movie, or even had heard of it, I wrote a piece of music under the same name, inspired by the scores for my favorite film of all-time at the time, “The Crow,” and it’s sequel. When I first read about this movie years later, I immediately latched on to the title as it being something I should watch, with the added bonus of being directed by Nicholas Ray, who also made “Rebel Without a Cause,” and starred Humphrey Bogart, who had been moving up my list of favorite actors. The movie, though, has stayed with my since I watched it, so trust me when I say that, even if it went by another name, it would hold the same affection for me.
Humphrey Bogart, who also produced the film, stars as Dixon Steele, a screenwriter who hasn’t had a hit in a long time, with his alcoholism seeming to be a big reason for it. One night, he’s offered the chance to adapt a best-seller, the type of gig that might put him back on the A-list. While he’s out, he picks up a young woman (Martha Stewart, not the one you’re thinking of) who’s read the book, and gets her to come home to tell him the story he’s supposed to adapt. It seems suspicious to her that he takes off his shoes and puts a robe on, but he doesn’t have seduction on the brain– drinking and hearing the story is all he cares about. She leaves for the night, and he goes to sleep. The next morning, he gets a rude awakening when a detective friend shows up at his apartment– the woman is dead, and a neighbor (Laurel Grey, played by Gloria Grahame) is the only witness. The police are looking at Dixon for the murder, and Laurel has some suspicions, but soon love gets in the way, leading to all sorts of complications as Dixon works on the script.
It’s been many years since I’d seen “In a Lonely Place,” adapted from a novel by Dorothy Hughes, and while I’d remembered that initial feeling and the central story, I forgot the underlying story that really makes the movie a great piece of cinema. The main crux of the story isn’t actually the murder mystery, which puts the film in the noir genre, but the love story that develops between Laurel and Dixon. They quickly fall in love, thrust into each other’s lives by the death that lands on Dixon’s doorstep, and are excited about the possibilities of spending their lives together, but the tension about whether Dixon killed the girl or not, as well as his alcoholic temper, seem to stand in the way of their long-term happiness. For a while, Laurel feels like she can live with it, and maybe even turn him around, but after a beach date with the friendly detective, and a paranoid Dixon storming off with Laurel in tow that leads to a car accident, and a man almost dying at Dixon’s hands, Laurel is not sure whether anything she can do will help him. All the while, the looming suspicions on whether Dixon had anything to do with the murder hang a dark cloud over their relationship, leading to a choice on Laurel’s part that will haunt both her and Dixon forever. In a way, this is an interesting companion piece with “Casablanca,” as both cast Bogart in the role of a self-pitying man with a past that catches up to them. Dixon, like Rick, has his life turned upside down by the spectre of a genuine love of a woman turning up unexpectedly, whether it’s the lost love Ilsa embodies in “Casablanca,” or the hopeful love Laurel offers in “In a Lonely Place.” In “Casablanca,” Rick rejects Ilsa’s love for heroic reasons, while in “In a Lonely Place,” Dixon ultimately chooses solitude because the anxieties and paranoia that has marred his relationship with Laurel have pushed him to that lonely place in the title. It’s a powerful, emotional contrast that show the full range of what Bogart was capable of as an actor, and make us see just how good he really was, even if he didn’t have an obvious range other great actors had.
As someone who has dealt with anxiety and stress over the years, who has let obsessive thinking (bordering on paranoia) hinder my life in sometimes-painful ways, it’s the flawed Dixon that really resonated with me the first time I watched “In a Lonely Place,” and even though I never physically harmed anyone as a result of my issues, and I’ve learned to control them over the years, the movie is one I identify with greatly for those very reasons now. This and “Rebel Without a Cause” are the only movies I’ve seen of director Nicholas Ray, but just watching both of those, as well as glimpses of another one courtesy of Martin Scorsese in his American cinema documentary, you can tell that Ray was a director at home when it came to characters who fell out of step with the norms of society, and suffered great turmoil trying to live life on their terms. That they never really succeed is to be expected, given the worlds they lives in, but it’s how uncompromising the characters are that make their stories unforgettable. With “In a Lonely Place,” Ray shows us how deep-seeded and dangerous emotional issues can become in people, and how difficult it is for those people to form healthy connections with others, and it’s as honest in that way now than it was when it first came out. That it doesn’t have quite the same widespread appreciation other of Bogart’s films has garnered is one of the great tragedies in film history, because I’d argue it’s one of his best, and definitely most important, moments as an actor.
