so close to a 5 star! | In a Lonely Place [VHS] | Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame

Fantastic! | In a Lonely Place [VHS] | Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame

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	• In a Lonely Place [VHS] Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame Sony Pictures, 1999 average customer review:based on 73 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

One of Bogart's most complex roles

This was a very interesting role for Humphrey Bogart, and was a bit of a production code buster on several levels.

Bogart plays Hollywood screenwriter Dixon Steele, who is in somewhat of a writing rut. He also has a quick temper and a paranoia complex. He picks fights with people over the most routine matters and these fights commonly come to blows. He is indeed "in a lonely place" of his own making. Steele has a chance to write a screenplay based on a book, but the author wants him to read the book and give him his opinion in just a matter of a few days. At the restaurant where Steele has talked with the author, the hat check girl says she has just read the book and loves it. Steele invites her to come over to his apartment and tell him about the book to save him the trouble of reading it. This is all very innocent in what Steele intends and in what actually happens. In fact, Steele's reaction, unseen and unheard by the hat check girl, to her semi-literate oral book report is wickedly funny. After the girl tells her story, she leaves. Neighbor Laurel Grey (Gloria Grahame) sees her leave. However, the next day, the girl's strangled body is found next to a road. The police quickly find their way back to Steele's place where, due to his violent nature and nonchalant reaction to the murder, he is under immediate suspicion. He finds an alibi in his neighbor Laurel, and this is how they formally meet.

Almost immediately the two begin a relationship that gets serious fast. Laurel finds Steele attentive and interesting. Thus at first Laurel thinks Steele is innocent of the murder, but one by one her doubts grow. Steele explodes over little things, even eventually punching out his own agent over nothing. In fact, Steele's agent is his only real friend and actually is a bit of an enabler for his bad behavior. You always see Steele show his idea of remorse for his actions, even anonymously sending money to a guy he has beaten up over a traffic accident. However, the question that is left to be answered is - exactly what is going on with this guy? Could he have stalked and killed the girl over his anger at something else or someone else entirely? And if he didn't kill the hat check girl, will he eventually kill someone else? Laurel is asking these same questions as she begins to wonder - is it more dangerous to try and run away from Steele, or is it more dangerous to stay? One should never consider saying "yes" to a marriage proposal if it comes down to what is less dangerous.

Laurel is not exactly a finished book herself. Apparently she had a serious relationship with a well-off man just prior to this, and ended it for really no tangible reason. Then there is a kind of g ay subtext going on between herself and her masseuse Martha. They only have one scene together but it certainly throws out more questions than answers, just like the rest of this film.

If you like noir, if you like Bogart, if you like being challenged, watch this film.

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so close to a 5 star!

Pretty good movie. If you like Bogart this is a must not his best role but one of his better indeed). I didn't really like the actress that played the leading lady though, but she did her job in giving the script the tension needed. I would of liked if Bogart's character Steele would of been isolated a little in the flick (psychically scenes-representing emotional isolation; maybe to make you feel a little sympathy for him becuase after all we dont know if he did it or not, adding another emotional layer for the audience),hence "in a lonely place". Last thought: ole Dix Steele is a prime patient for PTSD therapy, no?

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Fantastic!

I began watching this movie on Turner Classic Movies. I wasn't able to see the end and just had to see the climax! I went online at Amazon to purchase it. I found it a great movie of its era--or any era. Most unusual. Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Graham were both perfect in their starring roles. The other cast members were also excellent. You must see it!

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I Lived a Few Weeks While You Loved Me

Humphrey Bogart is no hero here. He's a murder suspect. He's alcoholic, violently angry, frustrated, isolated . . . intelligent, fiercely loyal, proud, and longing for connection. This is perhaps his most nuanced, authentic performance, in one of his finest films from a purely artistic point of view. The plot centers around the possibility that he might, in a drunken rage, have killed a hat check girl he took home from a bar. Gloria Grahame plays an attractive neighbor who takes an interest. It's hard to say more without saying too much. You just have to watch it. The acting, script and direction are first-rate while the visual style serves the story effectively. Bogart's own company produced the film, freeing it from the constraints of a studio production. It was and remains unconventional. Not a success in its day or among his most popularly revived films, In a Lonely Place's stature has grown over the years. It stands as a finely-made and engrossing testament to Bogart's commitment to his art. Highly recommended.

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"Your Own Worst Enemy"

This is a most excellent movie, for any era - and if you are an old movie enthusiast and haven't seen this, it's a rare one in all respects..

"In a Lonely Place" ranks, in my opinion, as one of Bogart's best complex character work after having seen it for the first time not long ago. It's odd that a movie of this magnitude seems to take a lesser position in the press than does "The Maltese Falcon", "To Have and Have Not", which were fine film work to be sure, but the depth of emotion and character portrayal done by Bogie in this movie is simply outstanding, in my view.

Dix Steele is a talented, once powerful but now struggling Hollywood screen writer - whose soul is, indeed, lost in a "lonely place" from which he is powerless to extract himself. Evidence of his personal failures is everywhere; they surround him, follow him. His personality is such that it is easy for even those who know him best to suspect him of murder when a young woman he barely knew turned up dead after being at this apartment under totally benign circumstances.

The story line is truly ahead of it's time; it may even have been one of the first films to address the agony of a mental illness that takes control of a person who in all other respects seems normal until something triggers his violent, suspicious responses all of which seem to be tied to an unwarranted insecurity. Adding to the remarkable insight of this story, he seems to know what his problem is. He even retreats occasionally in the midst of a sudden, uncontrolled outburst as though he recognizes what he is doing; yet it is not enough to save him. He loses his dignity, his pride; and literally all of his relationships to it, including the love and respect of a woman he has waited a lifetime to obtain and who tries to return his love; his entire existence goes down before it. It is painful to watch, and therefore, we are given the stark, "lonely" insight of how it must be to live with it. Perhaps "live through it" each day might be a better choice of words.

Flawlessly written and connected, it keeps the viewer in a state of animated suspense. The love interest is enchantingly portrayed by Gloria Grahame in her heyday, who does a remarkable job as the beautiful, bright and unusual woman living in the same apartment complex who becomes romantically entangled with Dixon; but they are doomed from the beginning; the very mystery that appeals to her finally turns to fear and drives her away from him - even as his own choice of scripted screenplay words eerily forecast the demise of their hopeless love:

"I died when you left me, I lived for a few weeks while you loved me...."

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One of Humphrey Bogart's finest performances dominates this unusual 1950 film noir, which focuses less on the murder mystery at the center of its plot than on the investigation's devastating effect on a fragile romance. For Bogart, already a noir icon, the Andrew Solt script afforded an opportunity to explore a more complex and contradictory role--an antiheroic persona in line with the actor's most accomplished and absorbing triumphs throughout his career.

For maverick director Nicholas Ray, the film posed the challenge of taking crime dramas beyond their usual formulas and into a more mature realm, as well as a chance to cast a jaundiced eye on the film industry itself. Its protagonist is Dixon Steele, a Hollywood screenwriter with an acerbic wit and a violent temper. Tasked with adapting a bestseller, he meets a hatcheck girl who's read the book, hoping to glean its highlights before writing the script. When she's found murdered, Steele becomes the prime suspect, and a tightening knot of suspicion forms around the writer.

Steele's only, inconclusive witness is a pretty new neighbor, Laurel (Gloria Grahame), and the couple fall in love even as the pressure mounts. At first the new relationship is a tonic to the hard-boiled writer, who plunges into his script with a renewed vigor and discipline. But as the police continue to shadow him, Steele's own penchant for violence erupts against friends, strangers, and even Laurel herself, whose feelings are increasingly eclipsed by suspicion that her lover is a murderer, and fear that he'll harm her.

Bogart conveys Steele's world-weariness and underlying vulnerability, and manages the delicate task of making both his romantic yearning and sudden, murderous rages equally convincing. Ultimately, that performance and Grahame's sympathetic work elevate In a Lonely Place into what has been called "an existential love story" more than a crime drama. --Sam Sutherland

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