“ANGER MANAGEMENT ISSUES”

By Raymond Benson

A character makes an excuse for the bad behavior of Dixon Steele, a Hollywood screenwriter played by Humphrey Bogart, by saying, “He’s a writer—people like him can afford to be temperamental.”

Released in the same year as Billy Wilder’s acerbic film noir attack on Tinsel Town, Sunset Boulevard, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s similar assault on show business, All About Eve, Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place was nowhere near as popular—but it was just as scathing. It may not have been a box office success, but the picture’s reputation has grown considerably over the decades, mainly because Bogart’s performance as a bitter, angry movie scribe ranks among his best onscreen personas. But it’s not pretty. The guy has anger management issues, the likes of which probably had not been seen in a mainstream film prior to the picture’s release. Dixon Steele is a tinder box ready to explode, and of course he does, more than once, during the course of the story. Bogart isn’t afraid to expose a dark side of himself in his portrayal of a man who has, as his love interest observes, “something wrong with him.”

The woman is Laurel, played by Gloria Grahame (who, at the time, was married to the director). At first she provides an alibi to the police for Steele, who might be a suspect in a young woman’s murder. After Dixon and Laurel fall in love, their relationship is a stormy one. As outlined in one the supplements contained on this new Criterion disk, the “romance” mirrors that of Nicholas Ray and Gloria Grahame’s—they also had a tempestuous bond. It was so sticky that Grahame had to sign a contract stating she would agree to follow Ray’s direction during the making of the film. (And talk about sex scandals... Ray later caught Grahame in bed with his thirteen-year-old son from a previous marriage. Grahame eventually married the step-son after her divorce from both Ray and another spouse in-between!)

While the tale revolves around an unsolved murder investigation, In a Lonely Place is really about two lost souls trying to connect. It’s more of a melodrama than a film noir, although the stylistic traits of the latter certainly abound. This is not a pleasant movie; in fact, it’s quite disturbing for a picture from 1950. Bogart’s Dix Steele is not a likable guy, and yet we watch the train wreck that is his life with morbid fascination. Why Bogie wasn’t nominated for a Best Actor Oscar that year is a mystery—perhaps it was because audiences may have been turned off by the character’s mean-spirited nastiness. Nevertheless, Lonely Place is a remarkable piece of work, not only from Bogart, but also from Grahame and director Ray.

The Criterion Collection’s new Blu-ray release features a 2K digital restoration with an uncompressed soundtrack and a new audio commentary with film scholar Dana Polan. The noteworthy supplements include a 40-minute excerpt from I’m a Stranger Here Myself, a 1975 documentary about Ray; a revealing new interview with Grahame’s biographer, Vincent Curcio; a 2002 piece on the making of the movie, featuring filmmaker Curtis Hanson; a radio adaptation from 1948 of the original Dorothy B. Hughes novel and starring Robert Montgomery; and the theatrical trailer. An essay by critic Imogen Sara Smith appears in the booklet.

If you like your film noir tough, mean, and nasty, then In a Lonely Place should be right up your sleazy alley. At the same time, the tortured romance should appeal to love-cynics everywhere. It’s so dark, it makes a Bogart/Bacall movie look like a Tracy/Hepburn flick.

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