In a Lonely Place [VHS]

In a Lonely Place [VHS]
by Nicholas Ray

In a Lonely Place [VHS]

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Product details

Actor: Art Smith, Carl Benton Reid, Frank Lovejoy, Gloria Grahame, Humphrey Bogart
Director: Nicholas Ray
Cinematographer: Burnett Guffey
Editor: Viola Lawrence
Producer: Henry S. Kesler
Producer: Robert Lord
Writer: Andrew Solt
Writer: Dorothy B. Hughes
Writer: Edmund H. North
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Black & White, NTSC
Running Time: 94 minutes
Release Date: 1999-01-19
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Sony Pictures
Studio: Sony Pictures

VHS Movie Reviews of In a Lonely Place [VHS]

Movie Review: Not perfect, but effective and impressive
Summary: 4 Stars

This is by no stretch neither one of Bogart's best nor one of his worse films. In the late 1940s and 1950s, as Bogart began to break away from Warner Brothers and do more independent films, he began more and more to explore a greater variety of roles. In this one, he plays a lawyer who managed to break out of the rough and nasty neighborhood where he grew up, and a young tough who has been unable to break out and has gotten himself into a string of bad situations. The young thug is played by John Derek, who would go on to appear in a number of films (such as ALL THE KINGS MEN and THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, in which he would play Joshua) before becoming a photographer and director an husband of a number of famed (and similar looking) beauties, including Ursala Andress, Linda Evans, and Bo Derek). Given the utterly horrible movies he directed starring Bo Derek, it was quite a nice surprise to see what a nice job he does in this film. He was not merely a pretty face; he had some talent.
Bogart managed to excel in every movie he was ever in, with only a few exceptions, like THE OKLAHOMA KID, a Western in which he played a Mexican bandit, complete with utterly unconvincing accent. Apart from that and a couple of other 1930s roles, Bogart managed to shine even when the rest of the movie was vile.

The problem with KNOCK ON ANY DOOR is twofold. One is the highly artificial script, in which much of the film is told in flashback in what is supposed to be the opening remarks at a trial. It is unbalancing to have so much of the film told in flashback at a moment in a trial when such personal remarks would have been inappropriate. As a result, the trial ends up feeling not so much like a trial as a parody of a trial. The second problem is that the movie is a bit heavy handed in its social commentary. That society can have a pervasive and overwhelming influence on the ultimate destiny of a young person had been developed in the late 19th century by people like Jane Addams, and had become commonplace in the following decades. Many films of the 1930s focused on the importance of providing kids with more positive social influences, like DEAD END and BOY'S TOWN. KNOCK ON ANY DOOR tries to get a lot of mileage out of an idea that was hardly new. During the heavier of the social commentary moments, I kept thinking of a line from Monty Python, when the Church Police arrest a young kid who had murdered a parson. Someone points out in the arrest that society was to blame. "We'll be arresting him [i.e., society] too."

Nonetheless, this is an interesting and effective film, though somewhat marred by social sentiment and some serious structural problems in the script.

Movie Review: I Lived the Few Weeks You Loved Me ... Bogie's Lonely Place!
Summary: 4 Stars

Soft-spoken actress Gloria Grahame's sultry voice with Bogie's no-nonsense violent rendition of Dix Steele make for a movie that surprisingly has little to do with the crime drama it proports to portray.

Dix Steele, a hit & miss screenwriter, has a gal come to his place to read a book he was ordered to write a screenplay. He has her over, she has a ginger ale (she's a swell kid, ya know) and he gives her some money for cab fare. The next morning she's dead, killed by an unknown assassin.

His only alibi, neighbor Laurel, gets him off, but police suspicions run high. Soon, she begins do doubt that her lover hasn't actually done it to a point of fear and depression!

Several points to this film: Bogie hates the screenwriter hacks who pump out film after film successfully, bowing to the demands of Hollywood (those damn popcorn factories!). I can relate. How many times have we seen plays based on books that were a mere shadow of the author's intentions?

Women in this film notice Dix a lot more than the other way around and often comment on his honest face. Unfortunately with the face comes a fiery temper that makes people wonder. Did he do it or didn't he?

Nicholas Ray's use of lighting in this Black & White flick is masterful. The lights shine on Dix's eyes as someone points him out in the street. Again, the same intense, crazy light shines as if from his eyes as he dramatizes to his cop friend how the murder may have occurred: "use your imagination"...and "take your arm around her neck and squeeze, squeeze the life out of her!"

Cool extras by a film historian and the usual subtitles and scene selections. Not Bogie's most well-known but definitely well-acted. Much different than his usual tough-guy approach!

Others to see:

Gloria Grahame:
Sudden Fear
Oklahoma! (50th Anniversary Edition)

Humphrey Bogart:
Bogie: A Celebration of the Life and Films of Humphrey Bogart
The Secret Life of Humphrey Bogart: The Early Years (1899-1931)

Movie Review: Bogart At His Best
Summary: 5 Stars

IN A LONELY PLACE (1950) may not be one of Humphrey Bogart's better known films, but it certainly contains one of his finest performances.

Bogart plays a Hollywood screenwriter with a quick, often violent temper, who becomes a key suspect when a star-struck hatcheck girl is found murdered. She had been in Bogie's apartment earlier in the evening, but had departed, as witnessed by neighbor Gloria Grahame.

A romance develops between Bogart and Grahame, but the fact that he is still under suspicion slowly decimates the relationship, bringing the writer's darkest side to the forefront.

Frank Lovejoy co-stars as the investigating detective, an old friend of Bogart. Nicholas Ray directed.

The DVD contains a retrospective short on the film, featuring director Curtis Hanson.

? Michael B. Druxman

Movie Review: Quality Bogart flick
Summary: 4 Stars

Bogart plays a mean drunk scriptwriter, and it's one of his best performances. There's a good plot to this and some great scenes, but in places the plot gets a little lost, so it loses a star.

Still well worth seeing, though.

Movie Review: One of Bogie's best -- one of Bogie's least remembered
Summary: 5 Stars

Far and away my favorite Humphrey Bogart movie is the superb film noir, IN A LONELY PLACE (1950).

Bogie is Dixon Steele, a brilliant screenwriter with an unpredictable violent temper who hasn't had a hit film in a decade. Assigned by a producer to transcribe a trash novel, Dix learns that the hatcheck girl at a restaurant where Hollywood insiders gather is familiar with the book, so he invites her home to tell him the story. The resulting interplay between them is the movie's only bit of humor (and it's deftly handled by both).

After becoming annoyed with the girl's run-on description and mispronunciations, Steele wanders over to a window where he observes a negligee-clad woman (Gloria Grahame) who's watching him from a nearby apartment balcony; Dix closes the blinds. He sends the hatcheck girl off with $20 and instructs her to walk around the block to a taxi stand, then he goes to bed.

Steele's awakened at 5 AM by a friend, Det. Sgt. Brub Nikolai (Frank Lovejoy), who wants him to come to HQ for questioning. Under grilling from Capt. Lochner (Carl Reid) Dix is nonchalant when he learns that the girl last seen with him has been found murdered-- tossed from a moving car "like a cigarette." The captain suspects Dix is the killer based on his uncaring manner and a long record of assaults (he even broke a producer's jaw).

A witness is called in-- the woman on the balcony: Laurel Gray. She tells the police that she saw the dead girl leave Steele's apartment ALONE-- a lie, as he'd closed the blinds. Released from further questioning, a grateful Dix gives Laurel a ride home. This unusual way of being thrown together leads to the inevitable-- the two fall deeply in love.

Laurel is brought back to police HQ for further questions; Capt. Lochner tells her of his suspicions and warns her to be careful. Steele's later violent explosions make Laurel begin to wonder if maybe her lover DID kill the hatcheck girl?

Bogart and Grahame are absolutely brilliant in this movie. They both display so many emotions: passion, fear, longing, anger, joy, vulnerability, impatience, paranoia, confusion. If you haven't yet experienced "In a Lonely Place," don't hesitate-- it's a truly great picture!

"In a Lonely Place" is also available on DVD.
Bogart's next project, THE ENFORCER (1951), was loosely based on the Murder Inc. story. (VHS edition) (DVD edition)

Parenthetical number preceding title is a 1 to 10 viewer poll rating found at a film resource website.

(7.9) In a Lonely Place (1950) - Humphrey Bogart/Gloria Grahame/Frank Lovejoy/Carl Benton Reid/Art Smith/Jeff Donnell (uncredited: Ruth Warren/Billy Gray)

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Summary of In a Lonely Place [VHS]

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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