Editor’s note : this review is a
translation of one of the first reviews to ever appear on this blog back in
2009. Those were less than a 150 words long and were written immediately after
the viewing of each film. This is as aforementioned a translation and a longer
edit of this original film review.
In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)
A potentially violent screenwriter is
a murder suspect until his lovely neighbor clears him. But she begins to have
doubts...
One of the
many films of the 1950’s that is considered as part of the Film Noir genre with
crisp black and white, legendary director Nicholas
Ray, and Humphrey Bogart. Add to
that Ray’s wife at the time, Gloria Grahame, and you have a great
film on paper.
The opening
scene is a piece of anthology by itself in Bogart’s
filmography, his character Dixon Steele, a drunk screenwriter on a dry spell,
is in a bar and gets to punch a man, insult another one, and gets into a
fistfight. All of that at noon. He represents the wounded man that Bogie always
succeeded to portray in films. The perception of this actor can be compared
with this character as a man that is mysterious and a bit rude like a wild
animal that struggles to be around his peers.
