In a Lonely Place | The "Other" Film Spectator

Director: Nicholas Ray
Rating: NR

“Protagonists are always loners, almost by definition. The big one to survive the war was the Bogart figure—the man with a code (moral, aesthetic, chivalrous) in a corrupt society.” –film critic Pauline Kael from The Age of Movies

Humphrey Bogart is the romantic and displaced antihero who abhors and refuses to fit in a dark world full of greed, selfishness, vanity, betrayal, treachery, and superficiality. He always ends up having to navigate his way through it—just to survive. We see this in his other films such as Casablanca, Maltese Falcon, and in Nicholas Ray’s classic Hollywood noir, In a Lonely Place (1950), which captures this daunting quest of troubled morality, deception, betrayal, and corruption—all of which are an affront to Hollywood’s moral decay. What belies the glitz and glamour is something truly disturbing—an underground Hollywood where sequences take place in the late hours of the night. Car lights and streetlights barely illuminate the streets and the dark and winding depths of the Hollywood canyons. In the typical noir fashion, we are given an antihero who must try to make sense of this world. Bogart plays Dixon Steele—a lost soul who feels misunderstood and alienated, especially in Hollywood. He has to contend with being a “nobody” Hollywood writer who is “out of circulation” and “has not had a hit before the war.” Therefore, he is a temperamental screenwriter who refuses to compromise his artistry for Hollywood. He will not resort to being a popcorn salesman and will not work on something he does not like.

Humphrey Bogart’s Dixon Steele is also the quintessential omniscient antihero. He is not naïve about the world and is willing to face the painful truth. Underneath the tough exterior, he is a vulnerable moralist. He vehemently defends washed-up actors who are considered obsolete by Hollywood’s standards—even if it means getting into another brawl, which is currently his modus operandi. Although he is aware of the futility of moral codes, especially in a Hollywood wasteland, he continues to honor them anyway in his own indignant, brooding, and cynical way.

Already armed with the knowledge of a bleak, immoral, exploitive, and chaotic world, he is not surprised that a young hat-check girl, Mildred Atkinson, is found murdered later in the evening. Society is not afraid of throwing you away if you are considered obsolete and unworthy. For Dixon, this is all too familiar in Hollywood, which is a microcosm of the socio-cultural milieu.

Dixon becomes the prime suspect because he was the last to see Mildred. Prior to her death, Dixon had invited her to his place to summarize a trashy novel that he needed to adapt into a screenplay. When Dixon is called in for interrogation, the police captain chastises Dixon for making feeble jokes rather than feeling sympathetic, horrified, or shocked. In turn, Dixon mocks the captain for threatening an arrest due to his lack of emotion. As a displaced hero, he refuses to believe that a corrupt world can easily be fixed by quickly pointing a finger at the disillusioned, the hapless, and the frustrated artist. And Dixon knows that fame, success, and a macabre intuition that stem from the artistic mystique come with a price. Such qualities always make him suspect. This places him under a magnifying glass from his adversaries who fail to look at the bigger picture: the world consists of duplicitous and shady machinations. Dixon is astute enough to look beyond the obvious for the evildoer unlike the police captain.
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His new neighbor at his hacienda apartment complex Laurel Gray (Gloria Graham), an aspiring actress, is asked to ascertain Dixon’s innocence by claiming she has witnessed Mildred Atkinson leave Dixon’s apartment alone—or does she actually witness this? Is she an alibi only because she thinks Dixon looks interesting? Like any femme fatale, Laurel is enigmatic, shrewd, attractive, and sexually alluring. Because of this, Dixon and Laurel embark on a love affair that starts off being ideal. The love affair alleviates his loneliness, and he is able to return to writing. We also see a vulnerable and humbling side to him where he tells Laurel that he has always wanted to be with someone and now he has found her—even in the most unusual circumstances.

As with any noir film, the plot is never simple. When the murder suspect continues to be at large, Dixon’s romance starts to take a different turn. Laurel starts to have doubts about Dixon’s innocence and her commitment to him—as Dixon’s temperament becomes more unpredictable, hostile, and erratic. He is easily wounded by betrayal, distrust, and dishonesty, especially from those he has grown to trust. As a result, his mercurial personality often culminates into an uncontrollable anger that can be seen as dangerously life threatening to others, especially to Laurel. Yet, at the same time, he hungers for companionship and honesty. He is the hopeless romantic. He would not settle for a “maybe” or “of course” but rather a “yes” or “no” when it comes to marriage. As for Laurel, she gives in to his hasty request for marriage out of fear. In effect, Laurel’s intuition about Dixon’s questionable innocence affects her conscience, and, therefore, she is torn between staying with Dixon and leaving him.

Therefore, how does a man with an unpredictable temperament and an easily wounded soul rectify his yearn for love and his inner demons? In a Lonely Place offers one of the best performances from Humphrey Bogart who exhibits a powerful range of emotions. We are sympathetic to his humility, vulnerability and self-deprecation, especially when he is acutely aware of his shortcomings and misguidedness and most of all, his undying need to do right. Indeed, he is the romantic who believes in the freedom of truth no matter how painful, which makes him an unforgettable and noble antihero, living in a lonely place and being governed by a code that is moral, chivalrous, and gracefully aesthetic.

July 17, 2014