Review of In a Lonely Place (1950) by Josh C — 22 Jan 2010

-Contains spoilers-.

"There's no sacrifice too great for a chance at immortality." ? Dixon Steele.

Humphrey Bogart plays Dixon Steele, a down-on-his-luck screenwriter who becomes the chief suspect in an ongoing murder investigation. As the police look into him further, Steele falls in love with his neighbor, a young actress called Laurel Gray. Slowly the strain of the murder investigation brings out Steele's more violent tendencies. He gets in fights with a variety of characters, acts increasingly paranoid and begins to resent being a suspect.

"In A Lonely Place" is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, it neatly deconstructs Humphrey Bogart screen idol persona. Bogart has always exuded a strange blend of cynicism, nobility and intellectualism.. Bogart may always be coolly aloof, but buried deep down we sense some kind of pain some kind of fragility.

This fragility is what "In a Lonely Place" explores. The film has an emotional rawness that few noirs match, its first hour packed with a constant stream of darkly witty dialogue. Hardly a moment goes by where Bogart isn't spewing some bitterly cynical sound-bite, asserting his own superiority over those around him. He has no tolerance for the stupid, the deluded or the superficial, choosing instead to mingle with drunks and other humble characters. But as the film progresses it gradually becomes a dissection of doomed romanticism, the suave tough guy peeled away to reveal a deeper sort of existential pain.

Dixon Steele, in short, is a classic depressive. Like most artists he hides in alcohol and fantasy, lonely, torn and alienated by choice. He's also dangerously amoral, insisting that a girl find her own cab, refusing to show empathy for a murdered woman, remorseless when shown graphic photos of a crime scene and strangely aroused when given the chance to re-enact a violent murder.

In fact, Dixon is remarkably similar to Jim Wilson in Nicholas Ray's own "On Deadly Ground". Both characters suffer from what Sartre called existential nausea, or what modern psychologists are beginning to term "depressive realism". This is the belief that certain people with both depression and self-destructive personalities have a more accurate view of reality, a more realistic perception of their importance, abilities and context, than those who are not depressed. Such people, frequently philosophers, and very volatile artists, typically exercise excessive rational control in all situations, no matter how petty or insignificant these situations may seem. They possess a sort of super rationality, their lack of illusions generally associated with a personality oriented towards growth and learning. This is in contrast to "healthy people" who are more likely to erect various mental blocks, self imposed delusions essentially keeping them sane.

Director Nicholas Ray, himself a drug user and alcoholic who constantly battled depression, frequently populates his films with such characters. These are not only outsiders; they are aloof outsiders who resent themselves as much as they resent the baseness of those around them. These feelings give rise to a toxic blend of self destructiveness and self obsession, the ego inflating only because the organism knows just how worthless it really it.

The second interesting thing about the film is its visuals. Ray literalizes Dixon's alienation by placing his apartment below his lover's. He must walk up to see her and when he leaves her for the last time, he must walk out and down a stairway, no longer worthy to be up there with her. Likewise, his apartment is a mass of prison bars and columned curtains, almost all the interior scenes having the view from windows obscured by the lateral lines of closed Venetian blinds.

Thirdly, the film reflects a certain fear that was prominent in Hollywood at the time. This was a period when Hollywood became the focus of the House Un-American Activities Committee, an investigative committee that tracked down communists and those with communist sensibilities. During this time many careers were destroyed or threatened and numerous people within the film industry were blacklisted. "In A Lonely Place" thus communicates the feelings of bitterness, paranoia and persecution that were rife at the time.

Fourthly, the film makes several cynical jabs at the film-industry. This is not a satire, of course, but Ray is constantly poking fun at how vacuous and empty Hollywood had become (or rather, always was). Despite this, Ray also manages to capture the romance of the movie industry, the love and camaraderie of its occupants, his film offering a nice little depiction of life on the fringes of Hollywood.

This film has my-all-time favorite quote in it too. ?I was born when you kissed me. I died when you left me. I lived a few weeks while you loved me.?

10/10 ? Following its DVD release in 2003, "In A Lonely Place" has steadily grown in appreciation. It is now frequently ranked as one of the best noirs, is often cited containing being one of many of Humphrey Bogart's greatest performances and is touted by many as being Nicholas Ray's greatest picture.

It is definitely worth multiple viewings.