In a Lonely Place
Novel~ Dorothy B. Hughes, 1947
Director ~Nicholas Ray
Writers ~ Andrew Solt, Edmund H. North
1950, USA
Stars ~ Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy
Dorothy B. Hughes’ novel is the tale of a serial killer shamming his way from place to place, a psychological study with noir garb. As a female writer, she convincingly traces Dixon Steele’s infatuation with women, through jealousy and misogyny to barely checked anger and murderous intent. Steele is not quite as arrogant as Lou Ford in ‘The Killer Inside Me’, but similarly convinced he has others fooled, that he’s untouchable. It is Los Angeles, post-World War II and there’s a strangler on the loose, murdering women. Dix is pretending to be a writer and ingratiates himself with an old friend working on the case. The eponymous place is one of misogyny and anger which cannot help but flare up in Dix. He is a damaged man, a monster emerging from that fog of the first pages, prowling the streets at night.
A prolific and award-winning novelist, Hughes’ book is ahead of its time in focusing on a serial killer’s mindset and toxic masculinity, it exudes noir suspense where the battleground is between the sexes and psychologies rather than criminality. One of its best moments is where the two very different women of his infatuation rub up against each other in his lounge. Sensationalism and sleaziness aren’t the agenda: indeed, the kills happen “off screen”, as it were. To get it out of the way: Dixon Steele is a name worthy of 'Carry On'. Dix’s descent/escalation into murderous sexism is repellent and Hughes isn’t interested in making him charm the reader, although we can see how he might be perceived to have charm to the other characters: we’re too privileged with an awareness to his inner workings and jealousy. One can almost sense it as a woman’s writing experiment in speculating about violent men, although there is a hardboiled attitude that fits it in untroubled with the thriller genre.
Developed by Humphry Bogart’s own independent Santana Productions, the film has come to feature on several “best of” lists, including from ‘Slant’ and Robert Ebert. It is obvious given the censorship at the time that was no doubt impossible for Bogart to be cast as an irredeemable serial killer, no matter how audiences were used to him being an anti-hero, which makes Hugh’s book a strange choice. The adaption is quite an altered beast from the novel, although general details remain. Here, Dix is a screenwriter rather than a faux author which opens the film’s major addition as a commentary of the Hollywood of the time. Nicholas Ray’s fifth film, ‘In a Lonely Place’ is often mentioned along with ‘Sunset Boulevard’ as insider barbs and sour criticisms of the system. Indeed, one of the more impressive meta-moments is the scene where Steele describes that just an everyday scene in the kitchen can relay that they’re in love.
Dix’s ambiguity is the film’s own: we start with his looking in a rearview mirror, giving a zinger that he never watches his own films, almost losing his cool at a roadside altercation and left framed alone against the stop stencilled in the road. It’s a neat summary of his dilemma: reflection, intelligence, temper, warning, loneliness. Such is the ambiguity of his wryness and nihilism that we aren’t sure if he’s guilty of killing the hat check girl. Although the era was averse to criticism of the military, the suggestion of PTSD is there in both book and movie, but it also riffs on Bogart’s own temperament. Louise Brooks’ wrote in Sight and Sound that,
‘In a Lonely Place’ gave him a role that he could play with complexity because the character's pride in his art, his selfishness, his drunkenness, his lack of energy stabbed with lightning strokes of violence, were shared equally by the real Bogart.
(Brooks, Louise. Sight and Sound, Winter 1966/67,
Volume 36 Number 1, "Humphrey and Bogey.")
And if Dix’s character tapped into brawly Bogart’s own, the disillusion with the studio system comes from all the filmmakers. The screenplay is credited to an authorship that is contested but includes Ray’s penchant for improvisation. Ray takes credit for rewriting the book’s ending which arguably elevates this story into a maturity that genre pictures rarely manage.
Once we have the measure of Dix, the film subtly slips to his love interest Laurel Grey. It is a much-lauded performance by Gloria Graeme, sensual, sleek, vulnerable, smart, in some ways just as elusive and slippery as Dix. It would seem that Dix also acts as Ray’s avatar, a chance to express his own difficulties with his reckless and sensitive self and the marriage to Graeme.
She was forced to sign a contract that agreed that she would not nag him, would always defer to the instructions without putting forward ideas of her own, that kind of disagreeably sexist stuff. But she did sign and in fact the shoot, despite the difficulties star and director may have been going through, apparently went smoothly. Indeed, despite the contract it plays very much as Graeme’s revenge on aggressive and possessive men. Graeme and Ray’s separation during production was kept a secret with Ray essentially living on set for a while. It is a wonder that the film doesn’t implode with all the background baggage, but rather it seems to hone so much focus and surely provided a more devastating and less tropey finale. It is an obvious passion- and passionate project.
There are plenty of quotable and sardonic lines (“What a grip. Comes from counting all that money.”), Bernett Guffey’s cinematography that delves into more grey than typical black-and-white high contrast, a memorable courtyard set between their apartments (based upon one of Ray’s actual addresses), a bedrock of strong side characters and Hadda Brooks singing to add to the jazzy heartbreak feel. Its strength is in focusing on fleeting happiness (“I was born when she kissed me…”, etc.), how people aren’t what we want them to be despite the romance, on how our key flaws ruin everything, how anger destroys what chance there may have been. How we leave ourselves in that lonely place. There’s a whole adult feel to the film that elevates it from mere genre delights to speaking of the simple tragedy of being who you are.
