Noir movie review

In a Lonely Place is a profound relationship film of trust and the meaning of love highlighting Humphrey Bogart’s best performance and delivering a moody, heartbreaking story tinged with suspicion and regret.

At least that’s the opinion of critics and film goers alike.  Not exactly mine. It’s a fine picture though. I can explain.

Robert Muller, host of Turner Classic Movies’ “Noir Alley” and author of books on film noir says the 1950 movie is his “all-time favorite film” and marks Bogart’s “unmistakably most personal role.”

The late critic Roger Ebert also gave Bogart high praise in his portrayal of a vulnerable, flawed man and says the film was “a superb example of the mature Hollywood studio system at the top of its form.”

Rotten Tomato’s audience score was 89 percent and reviewers gave 96 percent approval.  The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw’s review was typical:  “A noir masterpiece.”

I saw the movie many years ago and remembered being unimpressed.  I watched it recently for this review, however, and now appreciate the story and the acting.  Nevertheless, I watched the film this second time after reading the novel of the same name, by Dorothy B. Hughes.  The book is superb and yet so completely different from the film it gave me a case of cognitive dissonance.

But a great movie can be made from a great book, even if it ignores the book, right?   In the book, Dix Steele is a serial rapist and murderer. In the film he’s a depressed movie script writer with a dangerous hair-trigger temper.

The film begins with Steele driving his top-down convertible in Hollywood.  At a stop-light a blonde passenger in the car next to him recognizes Steele:

“Dix Steele! How are you?” she says.  “Don’t you remember me?”

“No, I’m sorry. I can’t say that I do.”

“You wrote the last picture I did at Columbia.”

“I make it a point never to see pictures I write.”

The driver of the car interrupts and tells Steele to “stop bothering my wife.”

Steele then insults him and the driver tells Steele to pull over to the curb.  “What’s wrong with right here,” says Steele.  As he starts to open his door, the other car speeds off.

This scene introduces Bogart’s character, his occupation and his usual disposition.  The second scene is commentary on the plot and rounds out Steele’s circumstances and perhaps his future:

He drives up to a Hollywood restaurant and before he enters, he’s approached by two children.  One asks for his autograph.

“Who am I?” Steele asks.

“I don’t know,” the child replies.

“Don’t bother, he’s nobody,” the other child says.

“She’s right,” Steele says as he’s signing the autograph book.

When he meets his agent at the restaurant bar he tells Steele that he’s got a job for him. A film producer wants him to adapt a novel and the agent gives him the book.

“You’ve got to go to work,” the agent says, “you’ve been out of circulation too long.”

Steele tells him he won’t work on a book he doesn’t like.

“Are you in any position to be choosy,” says a film director seated next to them at the bar. “You haven’t written a hit since before the war.”

Steele seems to relent and as he leaves he hires a coat-room clerk to read the book to him.

Back at his apartment the young woman is at first nervous but then sees that Steele really just wants her read the book out loud.  But before long Steele is bored with the story and tells the woman to get a cab and go home.  Later, the woman is found murdered, her body dumped by the side of the road. Steele is a suspect.

Coincidentally, the detective who visits Steele the next morning is Brub Nicolai (Frank Lovejoy) an old pal of his from the service. Nicolai takes him to the police station where Steele is grilled by a captain.  Soon, an apartment neighbor shows up to confirm Steele’s story that he sent the young woman away and didn’t accompany her.

The neighbor, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), tells detectives she noticed Steele from her balcony before she went to bed.  Her word is enough to end the interrogation.

After he’s released, Steele and Gray, an aspiring actress, exchange snappy, slightly seductive repartee in their apartment garden, while back at the station the police discover Steele has a history of assault complaints, but no criminal charges.

Eventually Steele and Gray fall in love and spend most of their time together in his or her apartment.  When they go out, she sees examples of Steele’s temper when he mistreats his agent and gets in fights with other show biz folk.  Regardless, they stay together and with her encouragement Steele starts writing again in earnest. The murder of the hat check woman is still unsolved and questions remain.

I think of Bogey as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon and Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep, but later in his career he played a variety of less-than-dashing roles that displayed his acting range and Dix Steele is one of those. Bogart doesn’t get to express all of the obsession, the hatred of women yet lust for their bodies,  that author Hughes’ character does, but then he’s a different Dix Steele; regardless, his is a striking performance characteristic of his later roles.  In one of the last scenes in the movie Bogart’s expression comes close to the look on the face of his Captain Queeg finishing his trial testimony in The Caine Mutiny.

Director Nicolas Ray changed the ending of In a Lonely Place as the final scenes were being shot, lifting the movie’s stature significantly.  As you watch the ending, see if you can image how it might have turned out.