{"id":19932,"date":"2016-09-03T18:32:26","date_gmt":"2016-09-03T08:32:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=19932"},"modified":"2016-09-03T18:33:27","modified_gmt":"2016-09-03T08:33:27","slug":"in-a-lonely-place-1950","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=19932","title":{"rendered":"In A Lonely Place [1950]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"tagfilm\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"inalonelyplaceposter\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Director: \u00a0<\/strong>Nicholas Ray
\nWriter: \u00a0<\/strong>Andrew Solt
\nCast: \u00a0<\/strong>Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy<\/p>\n

This review contains major spoilers.<\/em><\/p>\nI<\/span> didn\u2019t notice In A Lonely Place<\/em> when I first got hooked on noir films.\u00a0 I overlooked it as it didn\u2019t have the same reputation that The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep<\/em> or Sunset Boulevard<\/em> had.<\/p>\n

It was only when I had worked my way through all the best known noir classics and wanted more that I happened across this gem.\u00a0 In A Lonely Place<\/em> ranked #1 in a list<\/a><\/strong> compiled by self styled \u2018noirchaelogist\u2019 Eddie Muller and its description as a particularly dark, personal\u00a0film caught my attention.<\/p>\n

Directed by Nicholas Ray, the film stars Humphrey Bogart as temperamental Hollywood writer Dixon Steele.\u00a0 Steele is down on his luck and is described as having gone without a big hit \u2018since before the war\u2019.\u00a0 We get a sense for his short fuse when he almost gets involved in an altercation with another motorist at a set of lights (is this Hollywood\u2019s earliest onscreen instance of road rage?) and again when he meets his agent at a night club to discuss a possible film project and instead he ends up punching out a young director who bad mouths his friend.<\/p>\n

Dixon is sent home with a book to read to adapt into a screenplay but he complains that he is too tired to finish it.\u00a0 This draws the attention of the cloakroom attendant Mildred who offers to read it aloud to him.\u00a0 She does so and then when Dixon determines the book to be of dubious quality, he sends her home in a taxi.\u00a0 Hours later, Dixon is called in by the police for questioning.\u00a0 Mildred was found murdered and Dixon was the last known person to have seen her.<\/p>\n

Did Dixon commit foul play?\u00a0 He is given an alibi by his neighbor Laurel Gray who passed Dixon and Mildred when they entered the apartment.\u00a0 She then sees him again through the window to his bedroom.\u00a0 She can vouch for his whereabouts and that there was no arguments or disturbances with Mildred.\u00a0 Laurel\u2019s testimony frustrates Captain Lochner of the police force who mistrusts Dixon and is convinced he has the temperament and means to kill Mildred.\u00a0 To complicate matters further, Dixon and Laurel develop a romantic relationship and Lochner is terrified that she will meet a similar fate.<\/p>\n

Did Dixon kill Mildred?\u00a0 If he didn\u2019t, who did?\u00a0 Is Laurel completely trustworthy?\u00a0 And what about the Captain.\u00a0 Is he genuinely interested in solving Mildred\u2019s murder or is he looking for someone to pin the crime on?<\/p>\n

\"inalonelyplace\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These are some of the thoughts that ran through my head because that\u2019s how noir works<\/em>.\u00a0 The familiar tropes that we associate with the genre suggest that someone is being deceptive and has an ulterior motive for their actions.\u00a0 We know what we saw but in the back of our minds we wonder whether Dixon could have slipped away to kill Mildred or if Laurel and Dixon are in cahoots even though it doesn\u2019t seem possible.<\/p>\n

What makes In A Lonely Place<\/em> such a chilling and effective film is that it doesn\u2019t dabble with the more sensationalist tropes associated with film noir. \u00a0Instead the reality is much simpler, starker and disturbing.\u00a0 It hits you when Dixon is invited to have dinner with his agent Brub and Brub’s wife.\u00a0 Although he stands by his innocence, he postulates on Mildred\u2019s murder and has a disturbing gleam in his eye when he talks about turning a loving embrace into an act of strangulation.\u00a0 Laurel herself begins to have doubts about Dixon when he is incensed to learn that he is still a police suspect and speeds along the freeway, side swiping another car in the process. When the driver accosts him, he comes within inches of beating the man to death with a rock.<\/p>\n

The reality that dawns on the agent, on Laurel and on the viewer is that it doesn\u2019t matter <\/em>whether Dixon murdered Mildred.\u00a0 His violent and unchecked temper makes him a threat to those close to him, whether he killed before or not.<\/p>\n

Although film noir deals with \u2018dark\u2019 subject matter, it commonly does so in a\u00a0style involving fantastical characters such as power hungry mobsters, femme fatales and murderous adulterers.\u00a0 They are entertaining to watch but seldom scary or genuinely affecting as they are clearly works of fiction.\u00a0 When In A Lonely Place<\/em> is viewed through a modern lens as a film about a woman who is trapped and threatened by a man who is capable of domestic violence, it takes the film in a more grounded, realistic direction that the genre seldom treads. \u00a0There is a scene near the conclusion of the film where Dixon, Brub and Laurel are sitting together in a dining booth at a restaurant. \u00a0Laurel desperately wants to leave Dixon but the story she has concocted to run away from him begins to unravel. \u00a0It is the most intense and unnerving scene in the entire picture. \u00a0Just when the tension is raised to the point where you can’t stand it, the final scene takes places and Dixon crosses a line he can’t walk back. \u00a0The phone rings. \u00a0He is cleared of Mildred’s murder but it is too late. \u00a0It is a gut wrenching finale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A potentially violent screenwriter is a murder suspect until his lovely neighbor clears him. But she begins to have doubts…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":19934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1800,5],"tags":[1067,2562,1834,2563,935],"class_list":["post-19932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classics","category-films","tag-film-noir","tag-gloria-grahame","tag-humphrey-bogart","tag-nicholas-ray","tag-noir"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19932"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20334,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19932\/revisions\/20334"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}