I think one of the reasons modern audiences struggle with pre-1980s cinema is that a lot of it can feel samey. If you watch a noir thriller from the ’40s, or a Western from the ’50s, you can be pretty sure what you’re gonna get. That’s not to denigrate early cinema, you could say the same about ’80s action movies or modern-day superhero movies, but combine the homogenous feel of the Golden Age of Hollywood with changing tastes and sensibilities, and it makes sense that people will struggle to connect to films released in the distant past. All that being said, In a Lonely Place has many ingredients of what we might expect from a noir thriller: world-weary, cynical protagonist, femme fatale, a central mystery, but it also feels decidedly modern in both its narrative and its central messaging…
The world-weary, cynical protagonist on this occasion is the spectacularly named Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart) – a down-on-his-luck Hollywood screenwriter with an explosive temper. After a chance meeting in a nightclub, Steele persuades the hat-check girl (Martha Stewart – not that one) to go back to his place to help him read a script. When she turns up dead, Steele calls upon Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), a new tenant in his apartment block who witnessed the victim leaving unscathed, to help clear his name. Inevitably, because any character played by Bogart is charming as all hell, Steele and Gray begin to fall for each other, but due to Steele’s erratic behaviour, Gray starts to wonder if he did kill the hat-check girl after all. The beauty of the premise is that we don’t know what the hell happened either, so we’re going on that same journey of doubt and suspicion with her.
Bogart plays it perfectly. He’s convincing as an endearing (if cynical) artist and also as a potential killer. When he loses his temper and loses himself, his performance will be familiar to anyone who has encountered someone who can’t control their emotions. What really sets In a Lonely Place apart, however, is the conclusion. It’s an incredibly downbeat conclusion at a time when happy endings were all but ubiquitous due to the shackles imposed by the infamous Hays Code (which pretty much stated that bad guys should be punished by the time the end credits rolled).
In a Lonely Place is a captivating, prescient film that challenges the viewer, who seems at once deserving of both scorn and pity. Many around Bogart believed this character to be the closest approximation of the man he was in real life. It’s also possibly his finest ever performance.
