Product Details

• Actors: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame, Frank Lovejoy, Carl Benton Reid, Art Smith
• Directors: Nicholas Ray
• Writers: Andrew Solt, Dorothy B. Hughes, Edmund H. North
• Producers: Henry S. Kesler, Robert Lord
• Format: Black & White, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Sony Pictures
• VHS Release Date: January 19, 1999
• Run Time: 94 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302801133
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #160,523 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

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One of Humphrey Bogart's finest performances dominates this unusual 1950 film noir, which focuses less on the murder mystery at the center of its plot than on the investigation's devastating effect on a fragile romance. For Bogart, already a noir icon, the Andrew Solt script afforded an opportunity to explore a more complex and contradictory role--an antiheroic persona in line with the actor's most accomplished and absorbing triumphs throughout his career.

For maverick director Nicholas Ray, the film posed the challenge of taking crime dramas beyond their usual formulas and into a more mature realm, as well as a chance to cast a jaundiced eye on the film industry itself. Its protagonist is Dixon Steele, a Hollywood screenwriter with an acerbic wit and a violent temper. Tasked with adapting a bestseller, he meets a hatcheck girl who's read the book, hoping to glean its highlights before writing the script. When she's found murdered, Steele becomes the prime suspect, and a tightening knot of suspicion forms around the writer.

Steele's only, inconclusive witness is a pretty new neighbor, Laurel (Gloria Grahame), and the couple fall in love even as the pressure mounts. At first the new relationship is a tonic to the hard-boiled writer, who plunges into his script with a renewed vigor and discipline. But as the police continue to shadow him, Steele's own penchant for violence erupts against friends, strangers, and even Laurel herself, whose feelings are increasingly eclipsed by suspicion that her lover is a murderer, and fear that he'll harm her.

Bogart conveys Steele's world-weariness and underlying vulnerability, and manages the delicate task of making both his romantic yearning and sudden, murderous rages equally convincing. Ultimately, that performance and Grahame's sympathetic work elevate In a Lonely Place into what has been called "an existential love story" more than a crime drama. --Sam Sutherland

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

101 of 105 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing, Important Film, August 25, 2001

By 

El Kabong - See all my reviews

This review is from: In a Lonely Place [VHS] (VHS Tape)

For all the praise film-noir is lavished with (quite a lot of it valid), the majority of it relies on convention as much as the standard white-picket-fence, happy-ending 'family' film does: just invert the cliches and bathe them in deep-focus shadows. While this movie, on its surface, resembles the classic-style film noir of DOUBLE INDEMNITY, beneath the surface it's a whole different animal. No calculating evil females or tough guys masking hearts of gold populate IN A LONELY PLACE. It's a much more wrenching and powerfully disturbing film because the murder that draws the protagonists together turns out to be of peripheral importance, while the love story between Humphrey Bogart's troubled screenwriter and Gloria Grahame's B-actress spins inexorably towards damnation completely on its own power. The basic story has him a suspect in a killing, and her in love with him yet unsure of his innocence, but director Nicholas Ray stages the proceedings so that WE see it's not the murder that disturbs her but her own conviction that his self-destructive and volatile nature will destroy them both. To his credit, Ray never takes the easy way out of having Bogart turn monster on her. You care inordinately about the characters, hoping hard (as Bogart's agent does in the film) that some transforming moment will come that will spare these people and allow their deeply felt love to flourish and heal them both - even as the evidence before your own eyes tells you there ain't no way. For 1950 -hell, for any year- such an unsentimental and uncompromising treatment of a tragic adult relationship is a rarity. The shadows suffusing this excellent film come not from UFA-influenced lighting but from the Black Dahlia murder, the HUAC hearings, the death throes of old Hollywood & the moral and spiritual detachment of postwar American life. But most of all, they're projected from within the characters themselves. Grahame and Ray's own real-life deteriorating relationship formed the template for the doomed lovers, and for them, this film is an act of great courage. For his part, Bogart (the star and executive producer) takes elements of all his previous romantic loners and blends them with the harsh, sour pigments of Fred C Dobbs, running the risk of audience rejection. His performance is unflinchingly honest, among his best work ever. See this movie.

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A DEEPLY MOVING FILM!, June 18, 2002

By 

Elaine Campbell "Desert Dweller" (Rancho Mirage, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In a Lonely Place [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Filmed in 1950, this film is brilliantly directed by Nicholas Ray. Its production company, Santana Productions, was Bogart's own (Santana was the name of his yawl), which he started in 1948 and sold to Columbia Pictures in 1954, the problem being that his company simply couldn't outbid the large studios for properties he wanted, i.e., Dead End and The Detective Story (some of Santana's films included Knock on Any Door, Tokyo Joe and Sirocco, which Bogart himself called "a stinker").

Eric Lax, the definitive biographer of Humphrey Bogart, believes that he was drawn to this role because he could so closely identify with the character's inner turmoil, problems with women, and a rocky relationship with the ups and downs of the film industry itself. The character he plays is also a heavy drinker. Perhaps because of the similarities, and because Bogart was so greatly talented, his performance in this film leaves one in awe. It is wide and deep, cruel and unbelievably tender, and very, very moving. Gloria Grahame gives unquestionably the best performance of her career. The role was to go to Lauren Bacall, but Warner Brothers refused to lend her to Santana Productions for the film. Though I admire Bacall's early work, I am glad we got Grahame with her flower-like fragility.

It is a murder mystery, but more it is an in-depth character study and even a life study. Dix (Bogart's character) is full of rage which he has for years refused to confront. Laurel (Grahame's character) is lost. Both her film career and her search for a meaningful love are illusive at best. They genuinely fall deeply in love. Was she not strong enough? Was he not brave enough? We see what could have been, and are left with what will never be.

My great compliments to Art Smith, whom I consider to be the greatest character actor of his time (he played the psychiatrist in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid, one of William Powell's later films). The scene in which he is violated is a great moment in film.

Hats off to a deeply moving film, brutally honest and perfectly executed, each performance being a gem of its own.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding Bogart, Ray, Grahame,Solt,Lovejoy, etc, July 27, 2004

By 

Ian Muldoon (Coffs Harbour, NSW Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: In a Lonely Place (DVD)

One test for me is re-viewing and I've seen this film around ten times. The tenth time I found the initial scene between Ms Grahame and her lesbian masseur both witty and gripping as the almost sadistic masseur twisted, leant, squeezed with each vicious word her distaste for Ms Grahame's man, and I guess, for all men. But this is a film rich in such moments - including the apparently obligatory night club singing scene which was a cliche of the forties films - with the excellent singing performance interrupted by the enraged Dixon Steele (Bogart) as he physically attacks HIS BESPECTACLED BEST FRIEND AND AGENT at his table. Personally I find this film superior to REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. It is especially well written by Andrew Solt and Mr Ray gets fabulous performances out of all concerned. It is at the one time a film self deprecating about its own medium as an art - much irony within the film about the cliches of film - as well as a searing comment on post traumatic stress as the character played by Mr Bogart is clearly a victim of war. Indeed, I count the film amongst the best of its time which seems to get better with age. Brilliant in black and white.