In a Lonely Place

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.

 

Film Comments 2024: Man Bits

 

Film Comments 2024: MAN BITS

Toxic masculinity, then:

The other body horror concerned with gender, Steven Boyle’s ‘The Demon Disorder’ will in no way knock ‘The Substance’ off its perch of the moment but it boasts equally impressive effects, however briefly by comparison. The disorder is unhappy masculinity, and the demon is mental illness. Three contentious brothers must come together to battle both. With rough-edged machismo and a tone of melancholy and tragedy, and with a nod at farce (Shit! The cops are at the door!), it may have better characters than ‘The Substance’ but it’s nowhere near as memorable or striking. As enjoyably minor as it is, there is a sense it could have achieved much more.

It was up to Sean Durkin’s ‘The Iron Claw’ to really give the kicker to the fraternal tragedy. By the ending’s heartbreaker lines, Zac Efron’s performance had shown itself to be stealthily accumulating some impressive work. And when you have this kind of repeat heartbreak, it’s a pattern not a tragedy. 

A toxic scenario rather than fraternity in Isaac Ezban’s ‘Parvulos’. Three brothers trying to survive a zombie apocalypse on their own: the young actors give it all; the aesthetic is so washed out it’s often black and white; there’s some nice casual build-up, but it’s all increasingly a little bitty. You can tell it is heartfelt, which seems to make for a blindspot to its deficiencies, but it meanders along long enough for the audience to notice.  The aesthetic and the central horror of potential starvation do a lot to make this memorable, but if you’re bored of zombies this won’t change your mind.

Edward Berger’s ‘Conclave’ centred on a toxic brotherhood of priests, concerned only with infighting and the political machinations of becoming the next pope. Berger pulled back on the pyrotechnics of ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ but the set design, framing and editing were no less impressive, getting out of the way of a bunch of superlative old guard actors. It was a film that accented age by allowing a lot of acting with nasal breathing on the sound design, along with a lot of small gestures and enjoyable conniving. The lockdown claustrophobia of the conclave acted as a decent metaphor for the insular nature of religious heads as they bickered over something that would define entire populations’ Faith whilst not knowing the outside world. Brilliant casting too: all Isabella Rosellini has to do is lurk with a few devastating lines up her sleeve to steal the show.

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods’ ‘Heretic’ tapped into a quite zeitgeisty horror of mansplaining. Great performances all round, a little genre play and never losing its suspense although very talky.

Todd Phillips’ ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ came across as a response to the toxic fanboys that his preceding ‘Joker’ attracted. You waited throughout the film for Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix – a very canny actor) to find his anarchic-terrorist, villainous, anti-hero self, but the film thwarts at every turn, leaving him just a broken man. Hell, Phillips stokes up the desire to see him let loose and teach those abusive guards a lesson. It’s the introduction of starfucker Lee Quinzel (Lady Gaga) that lights the touchpaper, but the prison set is paramount and I inescapable, and Fleck is trapped by his own reputation and mental health issues. When I first heard this was to be a musical, I thought the numbers were to be an extension of Joker’s unpredictable craziness, but Phillips has a different agenda, making them melancholic expressions of Fleck and Quinzel’s romantic delusion. And the end stroke only clarifies the distance between the real and superhero world for such a perpetrator in, the coda of the reality of aspiring to be such a character or in his cult. A much hated film, it seems, but it withstands post-mortem dissection. But then the original was not so interested in being what you expected either, however misinterpreted it was by some. ‘Joker: Folie à Deux’ is a film that will surely grow in reputation and reconsideration over time.

When it came to straightforward action heroics and super-violence, Dev Patel’s ‘Monkey man’ mashed-up ‘John Wick’ with ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ with very enjoyable results. A little social conscience, melancholy and a style went a long way.

For more mindless excess, Nikhil Nagesh Bhat’s ‘Kill’ was a riot, starting with ten minutes of cliché before getting to the train and setting things off; and then dropping the title midway and saying You thought that was brutal before? The distinguishing feature that set it apart was that this train-bound actioner delivered all its brutality whilst humanising its bad guys and dehumanising its hero, all with Bollywood sentiment distracting.

Competing for the most despondent film of the year were ‘All of Us Strangers’, and ‘I Saw the TV Glow’. Both had moods and vibes to get lost in, both overcome by their own sadness and melancholy.

With ‘All of Us Strangers’, Andrew Haigh repurposes the novel ‘The Strangers’ by Taichi Yamada (adapted previous by Nobuhiko Ôbayashi’s as‘The Discarnates’) to plunge deeply into one man’s isolation. Adam (Andrew Scott) is a writer, so he has lots of time to be lonely in an apartment block which is apparently occupied only by another lonely man. It’s all about unresolved grief and trauma: it would seem that Adam hasn’t truly been able to move on from losing his parents as a bullied gay child, and he spends his time between ghosts and romancing Harry (Paul Mescal). ("It's okay, it happened a long time ago." "Yeah, I don't think that matters.") Andrew Scott is the kind of actor where you can see the cogs working when he’s alone, but the interactions he has with his parents’ ghosts are excellent. Scott, Clare Foy, Jamie Bell and Mescal are all up to investing the premise with the emotional possibilities that only the fantastical can reach. It builds a lot of affecting resonance, has a lush ambience and ultimately leaves him more alone in the universe than ever. And no matter how much Frankie Goes to Hollywood might try to cover it up, there’s the feeling that cruel moves have been made with a resolution that might stick in the craw.

Jane Schoenbrun’s ‘I Saw the TV Glow’ is a similarly ruthless-melancholic portrayal of one man’s forlornness, achingly sympathetic, dressed up in neon and a killer indie rock-pop soundtrack. Like Schoenbrun’s ‘We’re All Going to the World’s Fair’, it’s been thrown in with the horror pot and yet it’s far more amorphous than that, despite having some decidedly Lynchian moments. Our protagonist Owen (Justice Smith, covering a wide range of ages) barely even starts in life, barely recognises his own repression, is adrift. As a kid, his only friend is an older girl obviously going through her own identity struggle. The film is good at the brightness, rootlessness and uncanniness of adolescence, of showing how fandom grounds you, guides you as you discover yourself. It also takes a moment to show how those things we loved as youths probably weren’t as good and poignant as remembered. In this too, there’s a tragedy as we are left with Owen incessantly apologising to an inattentive world of inane distractions. It’s a raw conclusion that speaks of truth and empathy rather than cruelty, and the accumulative effect is an unusual gut-punch. If the film works only on its own wavelength, it’s defiantly obvious that is what it wants.

Hirokazu Koreeda’s ‘Monster’ was a far less abstract evocation of troubled coming-of-age, benefitting from shuffled narrative perspectives. Koreeda is a master of empathy, of emotional minutiae, revealing and changing as it unparcels itself. If the ending seems a little overly-contrived and, yes, cruel, that is nevertheless in keeping with the far more openly weepy ambitions. Surely a result of Yûji Sakamoto’s script, for Koreeda’s own endings tend to hinge on far more subtlety, although he filters here through ambiguity. It’s almost outdated in its conclusion. It’s beautifully told, has much to reveal without histrionics and maintains Koreeda’s reputation as a major and reliable dramatist.

Sean Wang’s ‘Didi’ was a more straightforward bildungsroman, but as a tale of one boy’s baby steps to maturity, there was plenty to painfully relate to. 

Matteo Garrone’s ‘Io Capitano’ ostensibly posited a warning about the dangers of striking out on your own, even about following your dreams – its Senegalese teenagers only want to leave Dakar for the pop life of Europe and run away for a mythical Italy. But the dangers and peril of migration start more-or-less as soon as they venture out, defying the warnings of their family. It is not as heartbreaking as ‘The Golden Dream’, and indeed Garrone presentation is a little too smooth, even allowing for a little flight of fantasy, but heartbreak is not the aim of this migration drama. Rather is it centred on the resilience and maturing of our protagonist Seydou, the goal being his trials from dreaming adolescence to scarred development through the horrors of migration and a predatory adult world. It is the performance of non-profession Seydou Starr that holds the film together, fluctuation between vulnerability and growing assurance. The final shot is about his self-realisation that he can accomplish what’s necessary against the odds. Even if there are to be new trials and horrors in the machinery of Italian migration, the film says, let’s just allow him his moment.

Warwick Thornton’s ‘The New Boy’ was awash with pretty outback visuals, the kind to get lost in. The new boy (Aswan Read) is an aboriginal nine-year-old, taken to an orphanage where the native ways are being “educated” out of the other boys by a renegade but well-meaning nun. He’s quite happy acting on his own interpretation of the symbols he sees, of being an outsider. Read is as comfortably insular as Cate Blanchett is brittle and frantically improvising to keep her autonomy and the safety of the boys, even as her Faith is undermining their identity. There are even moments where her desperation complements farce. After a striking opening with some violence, a calm, sunbaked ambience set is, dissolving the throughline of mysticism and the anxiety of Faith. It makes a somewhat sudden bid for thematic exclamation and tragedy for the end – the more insidious harm caused by colonialism and religion – but it is the ethereal nature that will stay strongest in the memory.

And from people struggling with identity and growing up to a character that is fully accepting of his lot, that chooses peaceful routine. Wim Wender’s ‘Perfect Days’ is one of those films that feels decidedly minor and wholly life-affirming at the same time, the kind of low-key ambience that puts your entire existence in perspective just by advocating for tiny moments. Hirayama spends his time between cleaning impressive Tokyo toilets, listening to rock classics and smiling to himself. Kôji Yakusho as Hirayama is delicious, happy to spend the film not talking and just soaking it all in – it’s a long time before we even know if he can talk. Even when some drama disturbs this calm, there’s no trauma; there may be tears but there’s no devastation. Whatever his past – and perhaps the brief interaction with his sister implies something difficult – he has reached a place where he is consistently kind and at the edges, just as he like it. It is a film about living life rather than a story, and much like Jarmusch’s ‘Paterson’, the apparent lack of Big Drama should not be mistaken for insignificance or inconsequence. We may conjecture what brought Hirayama to this place – maybe nothing at all – but there is no doubt it is exactly where he wants to be. Magnificent music taste, too.

To men that were far more discontent:

Alexander Payne’s ‘The Holdovers’ was far more narratively conventional. As a recreation of beloved films from the Seventies, it was every bit astute as homage as a Ti West horror. Kudos to the trailer for capturing that exact spirit. So you knew what you were getting, but the performances and writing were uniformly assured – after all, you have Paul Giamatti and Da'Vine Joy Randolph –and it proved a nice warm and comforting drama.

Cord Jefferson’s ‘American Fiction’ also housed many excellent performances – Sterling K. Browning stood out as the estranged brother – but was far more tonally unbalanced between its impressive family drama and a far broader satire on the publishing industry. The moment where Jeffrey Wright spoke to his characters as he was writing them was a highlight, but the film is never quite as inventive again.