In a Lonely Place

Starring:Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Art Smith, Jeff Donnell, Martha Stewart, Robert Warwick, Morris Ankrum, William Ching, Steven Geray, Hadda Brooks, Michael Romanoff, Pat Barton, Hazel Boyne, Jack Santoro, Laura K. Brooks, Frank Marlowe, Davis Roberts, John Mitchum
Director: Nicholas Ray
Studio: Sony Pictures
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com essential video
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.

Amazon.com essential video

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.

Customer Reviews:

good chemistry between Bogard and Gloria Grahame.......2007-06-25

Both are fine. Unusual role for Bogard as a Hollywood screewriter suspected of being a serial killer. Gloria Grahame, the woman next door Bogart is dating, starts having suspicions of her own about him.

No point going further into the plot, since it's been covered by others. Will only say it's a love story/murder mystery for grownups: Is he the killer, or isn't he? And if he is, will he end up doing away with his lovely neighbor Gloria?

Movie is slightly different from the book. Still, certainly worth seeing. For fans of Bogart, Nick Ray--and Gloria Grahame.

Classic psychological thriller.......2007-06-15

A down-on-his-luck screenwriter's (Humphrey Bogart) violent, antisocial temperament makes him a prime suspect in the murder of a cocktail waitress and ultimately alienates the woman he loves (Gloria Graham). Bogart's performance is sometimes perfunctory and unconvincing in the fight scenes, but he projects a frightening intensity in numerous intimate confrontations with other characters. He creates a character that Graham could believably fall in love with and then just as believably begin to fear later.

NOT AMONG BOGART'S BEST.......2007-05-26

I watched this last night after not having seen it in about 30 years, I think. It's only because of that and the raves from other reviewers that I decided to rent it. The opening stop-light confrontation scene was familiar, but seriously, I don't believe Bogie as a physical, tough guy like when I was a kid. Look at how tiny his torso is when he's not wearing a jacket! He looked great in a tailored jacket. His wardrobe here looks just like his off-screen Hollywood night-club style you can see in all the bios about him.(Cagney really was tough! When he worked with the Dead-end Kids,he didn't take any crap off them the way Bogie did on the CRIME SCHOOL set.) The scene where he beats up a healthy looking young college guy half his age is ludicrous.
Otherwise the plot and pacing are dreadfully slow, and the other actors are more nostalgic than convincing since they were mostly in film noir movies. Frank Lovejoy as the cop buddy was interesting. Especially with the presumably Russian sur-name 'Nikolai.' The only other movie I can recall Lovejoy being in wasn't 'I WAS A COMMUNIST FOR THE FBI' where his name was 'Cvetic.' In reality, I'm pretty sure he was Irish. Gloria Grahame was good in a part that wasn't written very well. Jeff Donnell was interesting to watch as Lovejoy's wife. I don't remember seeing her in anything else, but she was in 'SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS' as Tony Curtis' secretary.
Oh, I also liked the actual location shooting around L.A. and Hollywood.
I don't know if I'll watch this again in another 30 years.

First Rate Noir from the 50s.......2007-05-17

The aptly titled "In a Lonely Place" is harsh and stark film noir. As the story opens, Humphrey Bogart is a struggling writer with a reputation for being hard to work with and mean tempered. Bogey lands a job doing screenplay but is too lazy to actually read the book! HB invites a hatcheck girl, who has read it, to his apartment to relate the plot. Irritable and bored, he dismisses her. No gentleman, he directs the girl to a nearby cabstand. By the next morning, she is dead and HB is the main suspect. Viewers know Bogey is innocent but the cops don't. Sultry neighbor Gloria Grahame, builds up HB's alibi and the pair are soon in love. GG is the perfect noir girl; her gloomy performance perhaps enhanced by her deteriorating marriage to Director Nicholas Ray. The crux of the film is how the continuing pressure from the Law eats away at Bogey, exposing his fragile personality and worsening his already bad temper. He loses it in Grahame's presence once too often and she begins to doubt him. Afraid to spurn his marriage proposal, she plans to run away. And then? This reviewer won't give away the ending, but the final scenes are good, solid no nonsense, and uncompromising. One can hear that door slam at the fadeout. Viewers should be alert for two big clues. With 20/20 hindsight, the perp is actually quite obvious, in fact the crime is solved in the middle of the film.... but only the most observant will notice! This is because many scenes pass quickly-ILP demands utmost attention. Some will hit that rewind button. ILP will doubtless be more rewarding with multiple viewings; it has certainly aged well. This reviewer is not a major Bogey fan but the guy is well cast here. True HB devotees should pounce. A final thought: Here is yet one more example of why old black and white movies should never be colorized.

A brave and intelligent twist to the "man alone" theme..........2007-01-02

There was a brave and intelligent twist to the 'man alone' theme in an unusually literate thriller which isolated its ambivalent 'hero' inside his own destructive personality... This man was not physically isolated as Robert Ryan ('Inferno') had been: he was an embittered Hollywood screenwriter who lacked self-discipline and confidence. The lonely place in which he was trapped was his own psyche...

Perhaps some people thought Bogart over-acted, played the writer like a thug aggressively touchy... but he played his role well. No gangster this time, or cop, or private eye... He was a Hollywood writer - tough, irritable, moody, edgy, introspective; his nerve-ends constantly steaming; living alone with his talent, his reputation and his typewriter; irritated rather than fortified by a diet of alcohol and nicotine. His temper was uncontrollable: anything, it seemed, could explode it; and his violence was more than merely verbal.

Bogart found himself suspected of a murder that he did not, in fact, commit... He might have been anti-social, but he was no criminal... But the stress within him, reacting to the pressures without, built up so strongly that his rages, always near boiling point, became explosive... He hit people without good reason... There came a time when he was on the point of murder: in blood-hazed rage he 'could' have killed...

One watched the reactions of his friendly and beautiful neighbor, Gloria Grahame, and of his two loyal friends, a policeman and wife played Frank Lovejoy and Jeff Donnell-fully stable and controlled in comparison with the violent personality of Bogart... With them, one came to wonder if he was not really a killer after all...

No, he was not... But the thoughtful irony was that you realized that, if circumstances had been only marginally different, he 'could' have been a murderer... It was only chance, rather than character, which prevented it... In this compulsively furious man, there were the black forces that are inside all of us... The difference was that he could not exercise his control over them...

Average customer rating:

good chemistry between Bogard and Gloria Grahame
Classic psychological thriller
NOT AMONG BOGART'S BEST
First Rate Noir from the 50s
A brave and intelligent twist to the "man alone" theme...

In a Lonely Place [Region 2]
Starring: Humphrey Bogart , Gloria Grahame , Frank Lovejoy , Carl Benton Reid , and Art Smith
Director: Nicholas Ray
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

Film Noir | Mystery & Suspense | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Mystery & Suspense | Genres | DVD | Video