336 - In a Lonely Place, United States, 1950. Dir. Nicholas Ray.
Nobody does male hurt like Bogie.
How many times has he played a character who harbors some hurt from the past, usually by a woman, and closes his heart to protect himself.
On the one hand, he is tough, sharp, decisive, confident, and the best at whatever he does. On the other, he is vulnerable. And he guards his heart because he has such a big heart to guard. Because what is on the other side of that thick wall he puts up is something precious and wounded. He feigns indifference because he loves so deeply.
That is why people love him. Yes, because he is classy, because is confident, because he is cool, because he is tough, because he is manly. But underneath all that, because he loves.
Otherwise, what would be the point? He would just be posing. But he is not posing. He is genuine. He loved. He was hurt. He grew bitter. He put a shell around his heart. Someone shows up. He fights it. He cannot help himself. He loves again. And he is either hurt again or loves again or, in the case of Casablanca, sacrifices his love for something greater.
In the case of In a Lonely Place, his defense mechanism is not mere brooding or toughness. It is full-blown rage.
Something explosive is going on inside him.
Dixon Steele has an anger problem. He is a veteran Hollywood screenwriter. He lives in a courtyard bungalow in Beverly Hills. He is treated like a minor celebrity. He has a routine that involves working from home and frequenting his usual haunts, such as Paul's, with his old pals--his agent, Mel Lippman, broken-down actor Charlie Waterman, and later his former subordinate from the war and now police detective Brub Nicolai and his wife Sylvia.
His friends excuse him. "He's a writer. He can afford to be temperamental."
Steele has not had a hit since before the war. His agent has the ulcers to show for it. Part of his problem is that he writes too well. He refuses to do something he does not like.
Lloyd Barnes, a successful director, is sitting down the bar from him. Steele accuses him, "You're a popcorn salesman." Barnes acknowledges it. "That's right. So are you. The difference is I don't fight it." Steele fights it just like he fights everything.
And now he has been asked to write another script he does not like.
A producer named Brody has left a book for him. Left it with the checkroom girl, Mildred Atkinson. Dixon is supposed to read it tonight. He is not looking forward to it. Mildred has been reading it while on her shift. She read the ending first and then went back and started it. Now she is three pages away from the place she began. She will give it to Dixon when he leaves for the evening.
He asks her to come home with him and tell him the story. His intentions prove honorable. He only wants to work. He needs to hear the story but does not want to read the book. He is tired. He suspects the book is no good anyway.
Mildred goes home with Dixon. She tells him the story. She gets into it. Just when he opens the doors to his patio and sees his neighbor standing outside across the way, Mildred gets to the place in the story where the heroine is in trouble, and she starts shouting, "Help! Help!" The neighbor, an attractive woman that seems to be eyeing Dixon, hears Mildred's cries. Dixon rushes to quieten her.
When they are finished he gives her money and sends her to a taxicab stand on the nearby corner.
He goes to bed.
The next morning, early, his old friend, the detective Brub Nicolai, comes to call. And invites him in to the station to talk to the chief, Captain Lochner.
Dixon responds with sarcasm. He is willing. He goes. And when he arrives, he finds out what it is all about.
Mildred Atkinson was murdered last night.
Her body was thrown from a car into a nearby canyon (Laurel? Coldwater? Benedict? Franklin? Runyan? Beechwood? Las Virgenes? Topanga? Stone?).
Coldwater, Benedict, and Franklin are closer to Beverly Hills.
Laurel, Runyan, and Beechwood are closer to Hollywood.
Mildred Atkinson told Dixon Steele at Paul's that she lives in Inglewood. If someone picked her up in Beverly Hills and drove her to Inglewood, he would most likely take La Cienega Boulevard south. But that goes in the opposite direction of the canyons. If he were abducting her, he would not even pretend to go in the direction of her home, but would rather turn north and go immediately up Coldwater Canyon Drive or Benedict Canyon Drive. Coldwater Canyon Drive goes up to Mulholland between Fryman Canyon, Coldwater Canyon, and Franklin Canyon.
Wherever it was, Dixon Steele, the writer, who has written so many deaths, imagines it took place "in a lonely place in the road." And he killed her in the car.
"If she was already dead, he'd put her in the back. In that case he couldn't have dumped her without stopping."
The difference is, I don't fight it. Read more: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=in-a-lonely-place
One thing the movie never addresses: why was Mildred Atkinson in the private car of a man and not in a taxi with a taxi driver? Did he see her at the taxi stand (or walking to it) and force her? Or did he lure her in with some promise of stardom.
It happens. It has happened many times over the years. It happens today.
The canyons are full of . . . secrets.
This is a Hollywood movie. It takes place in the working world of the moving picture business.
Another movie about Hollywood came out in 1950: Sunset Blvd. Some people cite All About Eve, but it is not about Hollywood. It is about Broadway.
They bring in the neighbor as a witness. Her name is Laurel Gray. She is played by Gloria Grahame. You know her as the "bad girl" Violet in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Miss Gray moved into the neighboring bungalow a few days ago. And she has kept her eyes on Dixon Steele. The property manager bragged that she had a celebrity staying on the premises. Miss Gray just likes his face. She heard the dead girl cry last night. "Help! Help!" Will she implicate Steele or help him?
And what will come of the investigation?
Dixon the writer can figure it out. If they ask him. "I've killed dozens of people in pictures. No, I didn't do it. I could never throw a lovely body from a moving car. My artistic temperament wouldn't permit it. Creative artists have a respect for cadavers. We treat them with reverence. Put them in soft beds. Lay them on fur rugs. At the foot of a staircase. But we could never throw them from a car like cigarette butts."
But that does not move Captain Lochner.
And what will come of this potential new relationship? With this explosive man.
Martha the Masseuse warns Miss Gray. You will be sorry. He is volatile. Violent. He is a genius. And that comes with a temper. And instability. And fury.
Miss Gray has her own past. Just as Steele has his. And those pasts could come back to collide with one another. Like a car crash when coming back from the beach. Or a punch in the face. Or a heavy rock to the side of the head.
If only she can trust him.
If only he can trust her.
One thing is for sure. We recommend he does not answer the phone. Either at the restaurant or at the house. He might just not like what he hears. And he might just not respond in the best way.
Maybe love can heal.
Maybe Laurel can get through to him.
Maybe Dixon can write his new script and change his life before it is too late.
Because up to now Dixon has been at the bottom of his own canyon.
Up to now he has been lost
in a lonely place.
* * * * *
When Humphrey Bogart starred in High Sierra in 1941, the film that finally put him on the map as a leading man, it was his 40th film. Think about that. His 40th. Before then, he played character roles, supporting roles, and the occasional lead in a B picture. Until then, that is how the studios perceived him. As a supporting character actor. But High Sierra changed everything for him. All of the movies that most people know came later. He turned in many great performances in now-classic films before then, but most people know the films that came later.
Two movies later, with his 42nd film, he made the first film that made him a star, The Maltese Falcon (1941). Casablanca (1942) was his 46th. The forties were clearly his decade.
By the time he made In a Lonely Place (1950), his 62nd film, he was an American treasure. He had met and married Lauren Bacall and made four films with her. He had started his own production company, Santana Productions, named for his yacht. And he was the number one box-office draw in the world.
He still had more than a dozen films ahead of him, including the classics The African Queen (1951), The Caine Mutiny (1954), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), the Christmas comedy We're No Angels (1955), and the beloved Sabrina (1954), with Audrey Hepburn and William Holden.
And here he was riding high.
He had about as complete a career as any of the great stars, for someone who worked in film for only twenty-five years, before dying early at the young age of 57.
In this film, Art Smith plays Steele's agent. Art Smith does not even have a picture on IMDb, but we have just seen him in three films: here, as the doctor in Brute Force (1947), and as the FBI agent Retz in Ride the Pink Horse (1947).
I was born when she kissed me.
I died when she left me.
I lived a few weeks while she loved me.
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