While driving to meet his agent, Mel Lippman, Steele's explosive temper is revealed when, at a stoplight, he engages with another motorist in a confrontation that almost becomes violent. "[22], The 1986 song "In a Lonely Place" by the Smithereens, from the album Especially For You, was inspired by the film. The next morning, Steele is awakened by a police detective named Brub Nicolai, who served under Steele during the war. In a Lonely Place (1950) Plot. Steele goes to the police station and attempts to clear his name, meeting Atkinson's boyfriend Harry Kesler, who works at a bank. "Before inertia set in, he played one fascinatingly complex character, craftily directed by Nicholas Ray, in a film whose title perfectly defined Humphrey's own isolation among people. When Ray directed his wife Gloria Grahame as Laurel opposite Humphrey Bogart’s Dix, he made art imitate life by fueling his atypical film noir with the atmosphere of his ailing marriage, which wasn’t seventeen months old when production began at the end of October 1949. Add the first question. Private detective Philip Marlowe is hired by a wealthy family. "[19], Curtis Hanson is featured on the retrospective documentary of the DVD release showing his admiration for the film, notably Ray's direction, the dark depiction of Hollywood and Bogart's performance. While many film noir's focus on crime only, this one fuses crime with romance and the result is a film that is both thrilling and touching. The film is very pessimistic, which is a part of the film noir tradition and the pessimistic outlook of the movie blends excellently with the stylish black and white cinematography. Grahame and Ray's marriage was starting to come apart during filming. Andrew Solt, who fashioned the screenplay from a story by Dorothy B. Hughes and an adaptation by Edmund H. North, has had the good sense to resolve the story logically. August 13, 2020 August 13, 2020 Jaymes Durante Leave a comment. At a dinner with Nicolai and his wife, Steele has them re-enact the murder; his odd behavior leads Nicolai's wife Sylvia to doubt Steele's innocence. Year: 1995 135 Views. The staff at Variety magazine in May 1950 gave the film a good review and wrote, "In In a Lonely Place Humphrey Bogart has a sympathetic role though cast as one always ready to mix it with his dukes. In a Lonely Place is one of the most bitter and disturbing examples. When this well dries up, he murders a wealthy young man and assumes his identity, in a manner similar to Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley. In a Lonely Place (1950) Pages: The Story . Nicolai takes him downtown to be questioned by his superior, who reveals that Mildred was murdered, and Steele is a suspect. Bacall was a natural choice given her off-screen marriage to Bogart and their box-office appeal, but Warner Bros. refused to loan her out, a move often thought to be in reaction to Bogart having set up his own independent production company, the type of which Warner Bros. were afraid would jeopardize the future of the major studios. He also notes that a difference between Steele in the film and Steele in the novel is their respective treatment of women. Screenwriter Dixon Steele, faced with the odious task of scripting a trashy bestseller, has hat-check girl Mildred Atkinson tell him the story in her own words. Shelves: horror-and-dark-fiction, fiction I finally was able to run down a copy of Wagner’s In a Lonely Place, via Interlibrary Loan. Certificate: Passed [16], Bosley Crowther lauded the film, especially Bogart's performance and the screenplay, writing, "Everybody should be happy this morning. The plot includes mystery and suspense, and it follows Bogart as the girl that he invited to his apartment is found dead.The story of In a Lonely Place really picks up when Bogart comes into contact with his neighbour, a mysterious young woman whom he promptly falls in love with. This movie, and I'm not saying it's the greatest movie ever made, but it represents many things that I think are worth aspiring to, such as having character and emotion be the driving force, rather than the plot. In a Lonely Place is a gripping story, but Hughes was too talented, ambitious, and grounded to play it merely for suspense….as Megan Abbott points out in her splendidly perceptive afterword, Hughes takes the gender clichés of noir and turns them on their head. North's treatment was not used. As a hurricane approaches, the two end up confronting each other. Eisenschitz, Bernard. Tough cop Dave Bannion takes on a politically powerful crime syndicate. No question of Steele's innocence exists in the novel, which follows the investigation of a murder Steele plainly committed and his interference in the investigation for his own ends. Then I kicked everybody off stage except Bogart, Art Smith and Gloria. He finds she is an aspiring actress with only a few low-budget films to her credit. Written with controlled elegance, Dorothy B. Hughes’s tense novel is at once an early indictment of a truly toxic masculinity and a twisty page-turner with a surprisingly feminist resolution. In a Lonely Place gave him a role that he could play with complexity because the character's pride in his art, his selfishness, his drunkenness, his lack of energy stabbed with lightning strokes of violence, were shared equally by the real Bogart. Huh! Steele leaves the beach with Gray and drives erratically until they sideswipe another car. In a Lonely Place is both a meditation on screenwriting and an example of the craft at its finest. The film follows the question of whether Steele finally went too far in his anger and committed the murder to a tragic end: even though he is proved innocent, his rage at the cloud of suspicion has driven the woman he loves away for good. The film is … During World War II, American expatriate Harry Morgan helps transport a French Resistance leader and his beautiful wife to Martinique while romancing a sensuous lounge singer. "This lady is the queen of noir, and In a Lonely Place is her crown. In a Lonely Place blasted my mind open to new ways of reading. Meeting with Lippman at a nightclub, Steele is cajoled into adapting a book for a movie. Laurel proves to be just what Steele needed, and their friendship ripens into love. Review by Richard Chandler ★★★★★ 16 "There's no sacrifice too great for a chance at immortality." 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