In a Lonely Place (1950)

Director:

Nicholas Ray

Writers:

Andrew Solt (screenplay)
Edmund H. North (adaptation)

Release Date:

17 May 1950 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Film-Noir | Mystery | Romance | Thriller

Tagline:

THE BOGART SUSPENSE PICTURE WITH THE SURPRISE FINISH - (original poster)

Plot:

A potentially violent screenwriter is a murder suspect until his lovely neighbor clears him. But she begins to have doubts...

Plot Keywords:

Screenwriter | Neighbor | Hat Check Girl | Murder | Alibi

Awards:

1 win

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

Humphrey Bogart	...	Dixon Steele
Gloria Grahame	...	Laurel Gray
Frank Lovejoy	...	Det. Sgt. Brub Nicolai
Carl Benton Reid	...	Capt. Lochner
Art Smith	...	Agent Mel Lippman
Jeff Donnell	...	Sylvia Nicolai
Martha Stewart	...	Mildred Atkinson
Robert Warwick	...	Charlie Waterman
Morris Ankrum	...	Lloyd Barnes
William Ching	...	Ted Barton
Steven Geray	...	Paul, Headwaiter
Hadda Brooks	...	Singer

Also Known As:

Behind the Mask (USA) (working title)
Late at Night (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

94 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Norway:16 | USA:Approved (certificate #14256) | UK:PG (video rating) (1990) | UK:A (original rating) (passed with cuts) | UK:PG (tv rating) | Australia:PG | Finland:K-16 | Spain:18

Filming Locations:

Beverly Hills, California, USA

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

In the original ending and the final shooting script, Dix actually did kill Laurel in the heat of their argument. Martha comes and discovers the body as Dix silently types his script. Later, when his detective friend comes to arrest him, Dix says that he's almost done with his script. There is a close-up of the last page of the script, echoing the words Dix said in the car to Laurel: "I was born when she kissed me, I died when she left me, I live a few weeks while she loved me." It is said that this scene was filmed, but before it could be shown to a test audience, director Nicholas Ray shot a new ending because he wasn't pleased with the scripted ending - he didn't want to think that violence was the only way out of this situation. He cleared the set, including Lauren Bacall, who was visiting her husband on-set at the time, except for Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Art Smith - who ended up not being used in the final scene filmed - plus the camera and sound men. They improvised the ending that is seen in the final cut.

Goofs:

Continuity: When Dixon and Laurel are in the car, the window glass of his left hand-side is up. But after he stops the car, in the shots from the left, the window glass disappears.

Quotes:

Dixon Steele: [to Laurel] I've been looking for someone a long time... I didn't know her name or where she lived - I'd never seen her before. A girl was killed, and because of that, I found what I was looking for. Now I know your name, where you live, and how you look.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (2004) (TV)

Soundtrack:

I Hadn't Anyone Till You

Disturbing & Important

For all the praise film-noir is lavished with (quite a lot of it valid), the majority of it relies on convention as much as the standard white-picket-fence, happy-ending 'family' film does: just invert the

cliches and bathe them in deep-focus shadows. While this movie, on its surface, resembles the classic-style film noir of DOUBLE INDEMNITY, it's a whole different animal. No calculating evil females or tough guys masking hearts of gold populate IN A LONELY PLACE. It's a much more wrenching and powerfully disturbing film because the murder that draws the protagonists together turns out to be of peripheral importance, while the love story between Humphrey Bogart's troubled screenwriter and Gloria Grahame's B-actress spins inexorably towards damnation completely on its own power. The basic story has him a suspect in a killing and her in love with him yet unsure of his innocence, but director Nicholas Ray stages the proceedings so that WE see it's not the murder that disturbs her but her own conviction that his self-destructive and volatile nature will destroy them both. Yet, Ray never takes the easy way out of having Bogart turn monster on her. You care deeply about these people, hoping desperately (as Bogart's agent does in the film) that some transforming moment will come that will spare these people and allow their deeply felt love to flourish and heal them both, even as the evidence before your own eyes tells you there ain't no way. For 1950 -hell, for any year- such an unsentimental and uncompromising treatment of a tragic adult relationship is a terrible wonder to behold. The shadows suffusing this excellent film come not from UFA-influenced lighting but from moral and spiritual desolation, the death throes of old Hollywood, the coming of McCarthyism and the Black Dahlia murder of 1947. But most of all, they're projected from within the characters themselves. The finest work of Bogart, Grahame and Ray. Special note should be taken of Ray and Grahame, whose own deteriorating relationship formed the template for the doomed lovers; for them, this film is an act of great courage. Bogart himself has taken elements of all his previous romantic loners and blended them with the sour pigments of Fred C Dobbs; as the star and executive producer, his performance is unflinching in its honesty, and as fearless as Grahame and Ray. See this movie.