There are a couple of interesting stories behind In a Lonely Place. It shows another side to Bogart, something he rarely got to show: his intellect, his braininess. Bogart was a well-read man. Most of his best friends were writers. He preferred writer-friends to actor-friends, and had the utmost respect for the printed word.
In In a Lonely Place he plays Dixon Steele, a semi-washed-up screenwriter in Hollywood. There’s something a little “off” about him. He obviously has talent, he had had some successes a while back – but he has a hair-trigger temper, and there’s something else. Something else. It’s a paranoia, yes – but there’s this sadness too. The kind of sadness that Bogart can portray, without a word, without a gesture. All he has to do is just sit there, let the camera pick up what’s going on his face and you feel all this grief.
This film has been called “one of the best pictures ever made about Hollywood” and I would agree.
Dixon Steele trusts no one. He has an agent, who hovers around him, trying to get him to get back to work. There’s an old drunk actor who hangs out at the same bar, a washed-up actor who obviously was once great – and Steele treats him very gently, and with respect, in the face of everyone else’s derision.
There is gentleness in the Steele character. Bogart makes that believable, which is why the movie works on such a deep level: when he falls, and he does fall, it is tragic. You root for this odd dark man, and yet, he can be scary.
Gloria Grahame, who was completely underestimated as a talent at the time, got the lead. She’s great. There’s nothing dated about it. (Well, except for the shape of her eyebrows.)
What is interesting about this part, in comparison to other roles – like in Casablanca or Maltese Falcon and others – is that … the typical Bogart thing that we all recognize: the tough-guy act, the way he is with women, the straight-talking, the intensity – all of that is there, but because of the material, it is no longer idealized. It is seen through another filter – and suddenly it seems like this man is a tremendously damaged individual, that nothing will heal him. He is HARD. I’m not sure if I’m making the point correctly.
All of the qualities which make him so wonderful in Casablanca exist as well in In a Lonely Place – only now they seem like character flaws.
Brave. Brave for Bogart to do that with his image.
I have a couple of favorite moments.
Gloria Grahame as the neighbor – who eventually ends up falling in love with Bogart – says to him in their first scene together when they meet:
“I like your face. It’s interesting.”
Dixon Steele becomes a little bit obsessed with her in that moment. He latches onto her: she likes his face, she likes his face, maybe there’s hope for him if someone like THAT is into HIM! You worry for him.
The next time they meet, they stand in the foyer of his apartment. There is some great back-and-forth banter. She is obviously a woman with an edge. She doesn’t play games. She keeps her distance from him. He calls her on it. “You’re the I-don’t-want-to-get-hurt type.” She says, “Is there anything wrong with that?” He smiles and says, “I suppose you save yourself a lot of trouble.”
In the middle of this banter, when he is pushing her to have dinner with him that night, and she is holding him off – all with humor, he suddenly says, a propos of nothing: “You are out of your mind.”
I had no idea what he was referring to. He breaks away from her, and goes to the hallway mirror, and peers at himself anxiously. He stands there, staring at his own reflection. He says, to himself, with no self-pity – it’s just the facts – “Who could like this face?”
He turns back to her and then, as he moves in to kiss her, says, in a “come on, let’s be realistic” voice, “Look at it…”
She doesn’t let him kiss her by the way.
But the way he says “Look at it…” It’s sexy, it’s sad, it’s like he is a little boy actually. He can hardly believe his luck. And his hope for something, his eagerness for a relationship …is a little bit scary. He needs it too much.
There is a moment at the end of the film where Bogart is the “real”-est I have ever seen him. A huge fight has occurred between the two of them. Things get quite frightening. This is not an actor, doing polite fight choreography. She is scared of him. He is in a rage, you can tell that his whole life is slipping out of his grasp. She was his chance at happiness … and what makes his violence so scary is that … he knows that he is breaking his own heart by turning his violence on her. There is such LOSS in his violence.
During the fight, he comes out of her bedroom, and leans on the back of the couch for a minute.
He leans on the back of the couch.
I can’t describe why it is such a moving moment – but the way he leaned on the couch told me his entire life-story of disappointment and defeat.
When the film came out in 1950, it was hailed as Bogart’s best work. Some critics still think that it is his best work. I sure do.
