In a Lonely Place (1950)
What a film this is, and what a performance from Humphrey Bogart.
He plays a short fused Hollywood screen writer Dixon (Dix) Steele, down on his luck and without a hit film to his name in a few years. When he takes a young woman back to his apartment to read his latest work for him and she ends up murdered later on that night, Steele is immediately arrested by the police, only to be given an alibi by neighbour Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame). Before long the two begin a fractious relationship.
It's testament to Bogart that following a run of iconically cool roles beginning with 1941's The Maltese Falcon and taking in such acclaimed films like Casablanca (1942), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and Key Largo (Both 1948) he would then portray the unscrupulous and violent Steele and garner so much acclaim for it. His ultimate portrayal of an anti-hero.
What happens in the murder case following Steele's alibi thanks to Gray is barely of any consequence in the second half of the film. It's all about the characters. In A lonely Place is a title that fits Steele to a tee. He's in a lonely place career wise, mentally certainly and very much so when it comes to his love life.
Steele falls in love with Gray and then she begins to get doubts about his innocence thanks to several violent temper flare ups. Gloria Grahame excels here as Laurel Gray. A bit flighty, a victim herself and extremely insecure.
Nicholas Ray directs, he would go on to direct Rebel Without a Cause five years later which gained him the bulk of his fame, but he does a stellar job here in only his fourth film. The way he makes the murder mystery incidental to the mesmeric character study that unfolds is crafted expertly. Most film makers would have you itching to know the identity of the killer but Ray, Bogart and Grahame make you forget about it until it's almost matter of factly revealed during the final few moments. However it's not just the way Ray works with his actors. He has some great compositional sense as well.
In the early scenes he shoots Martha Stewart (The murdered girl) reading the screenplay to Steele at his home, except the way Ray uses the camera she's talking to the viewer and it works beautifully. It shows her personality and her effervescence remarkably well in what is only a few minutes screen time and we come to fall for her completely making her murder all the more shocking.
The script is a delight, the direction exemplary and the acting phenomenal. In A Lonely Place is quite simply Hollywood at it's finest.
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