Movie Review: IN A LONELY PLACE (1950)
While watching Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place (1950), I was conscious of my body’s physical and emotional reaction while seeing the film take a dark and sinister turn. These near visceral reactions reminded me of those I felt when seeing other films that deal with obsessive, fatal attraction: Lolita (1963), Fear (1995), Obsessed (2009) to name just a few. None of these re-imaginings, however, seem to resonate as deeply and be as successfully charged with social commentary than In a Lonely Place, which follows a troubled Hollywood screenwriter (Humphrey Bogart) and his beautiful neighbor (Gloria Grahame) as they begin a love affair in the midst of a murder investigation.
Ray’s film is yet another self-reflexive film about the world of Hollywood, and the exhausting people and creative processes that seem to keep the infamous community thriving. Still, it’s innovative and refreshing in the way it presents its commentary through a dark, pessimistic, and immersive lens. Not only does the film argue that Hollywood bewitches and entraps the souls who fly too close to its light-- it swallows these souls whole, with no apparent hope of redemption, let alone reincarnation.
For validity’s sake, this motivation can be seen when comparing the differences between Dorothy B. Hughes’ book, In a Lonely Place, and Nicholas Ray’s cinematic adaptation of the book. In the book, Dixon is a wannabe writer for the purpose of gaining his uncle’s money. Hughe’s version of Dixon never writes a word, so the film’s writers, Edmund North and Andrew Solt, created Humphrey Bogart’s Dixon with the intention of making him an experienced, even tired, screenwriter. This is an integral aspect of the film’s plot (“artistic integrity,” anyone?).
A quick and shallow read of this film may produce feelings of animosity or resentment towards Dixon, who seems to play a role in creating a narrative of dispensable or commodified women at the hands of charming yet deeply tormented men. However, Dixon is a veteran of the Hollywood scene and, parallel to the ways we as humans develop our own values and personalities, is just a reflection of the environment he’s grown in. He’s tired of the monotony he endures, surrounded by sell outs, social climbers, and boring, predictable screenplays.
Much like his last name, Dixon Steele has grown hard towards the false pretenses, trimmings, and ideologies of Hollywood, and doesn’t soften up until Laurel Gray brings color and meaning back into his life. In seeing the redeeming and lovable qualities she coaxes out of him, I felt for him. I mourned for him as he reacted to Laurel’s “betrayals” and mistrust, because I knew he was only reacting out of the penetrative love he has for her, and taking out his deep-seated resentment towards a city full of relentless isolation.
In the book Dixon is a complete, psychotic murderer and he’s so far gone that readers are unable to sympathize with him at all. Bogart’s Dixon, occasionally showing glimpses of his sweet, charming self when around those he loves, is just another cog in the morally compromised system of Hollywood.
With a genre and style as engaging and heart-pounding as film noir, and with a theme as emotionally evocative as love and how far one is willing to go to maintain it, In a Lonely Place constructs two beautiful, empathy-evoking characters in Dixon and Laurel. The film seduces audiences into rooting for their hopeless love story.
The ending is film-noir at it’s finest; dark, tragic, and emotional. It’s representative of the unique love human nature craves from others, but more than that, it echoes the self-nurturing human nature desperately needs.












