In a Lonely Place [Criterion Collection]

Director: Nicholas Ray Nicholas Ray

Overview

"Nicholas Ray directed this brooding melodrama that is part Freudian character study and part anti-Hollywood screed. Humphrey Bogart has one of his finest roles as weary and hard-drinking screenwriter Dixon Steele, who hasn't been able to write a hit screenplay for years. It has been rumored that he had beaten up his former girlfriend and has a bad reputation for getting into fights. His agent, Mel Lippmann (Art Smith) gets him an assignment to adapt a novel. Dixon doesn't want to read the book so he asks hat check girl Mildred Atkinson (Martha Stewart), who has read the book, to come over to his apartment to tell him the story. After she relates the tale to him, he sends her to a taxi stand. The next morning he is informed by police detective Brub Nicolai (Frank Lovejoy) that Mildred was strangled and thrown from a moving car. Because Dixon shows no emotion when he is told of the murder, police captain Lochner (Carl Benton Reid) thinks Dixon is the killer. But Dixon's neighbor, aspiring actress Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame) vouches for Dixon, saying that she saw Mildred leave the apartment alone. Attracted to Laurel, Dixon and Laurel become lovers and Dixon tows the line --he stops drinking and starts writing. But the on-going investigation puts a damper on the relationship. Finally, feeling he is being hounded, Dixon reverts to his violent tendencies. Laurel, frightened of Dixon, agrees when Dixon proposes marriage to her, but she is secretly planning to arrange a flight to New York to escape Dixon and the fetid Hollywood atmosphere."

Product Details

Release Date:	05/10/2016
UPC:	0715515176811
Original Release:	1950
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Region Code:	1
Presentation:	[B&W]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono]
Language:	English
Time:	1:33:00
Sales rank:	11,953

Special Features

New 2k digital restoration ; New Audio Commentary featuring film scholar Dana Polan; I'm a Stranger Here Myself, a 1975 documentary about Director Nicholas Ray, slightly condensed for this release; New Interview with Biographer Vincent Curcio about actor Gloria Grahame; Piece from 2002 featuring filmmaker Curtis Hanson; Radio adaptation from 1948 of the original Dorothy B. Hughes novel, broadcast on the program Suspense; Trailer; Plus: An essay by critic Imogen Sara Smith

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Humphrey Bogart	Dixon Steele
Gloria Grahame	Laurel Gray
Frank Lovejoy	Brub Nicolai
Carl Benton Reid	Capt. Lochner
Jeff Donnell	Sylvia Nicolai
Martha Stewart	Mildred Atkinson
Robert Warwick	Charlie Waterman
Morris Ankrum	Lloyd Barnes
Bill Ching	Ted Barton
Steven Geray	Paul
Hadda Brooks	Singer,Ted Barton,Actor
James Arness	Young Detective
Pat Barton	Second Hat Check Girl
Guy Beach	Mr. Swan
David Bond	Dr. Richards
Hazel Boyne	Woman
Charles Cane	Angry Husband in Convertible
Jack Chefe	Bartender
Oliver Cross	Person
Melinda Erickson	Tough Girl
Arno Frey	Joe
Ruth Gillette	Martha
Billy Gray	Young Boy Seeking Autograph
Joy Hallward	Woman
Myron Healey	Post Office Clerk
Lewis Howard	Junior
Jack Jahries	Officer
Mike Lally	Bar Patron
Tony Layng	Man
Mark Lowell	Airline Clerk
Frank Marlowe	Dave
Harold Miller	Nightclub Patron
John Mallory	Bar Patron
George Nardelli	Nightclub Patron
Allen Pinson	Man
Davis Roberts	Flower Shop Employee
Michael Romanoff	Prince Romanoff
Jack Santoro	Man
Cosmo Sardo	Bartender
Alix Talton	Frances Randolph
Evelyn Underwood	Woman
June Vincent	Actress In Convertible
Ruth Warren	Effie
Art Smith	Actor
George Antheil	Composer

Technical Credits

Andrew Solt

Nicholas Ray	Director
Andrew Solt	Screenwriter
Robert Lord	Producer
Humphrey Bogart	Executive Producer

Editorial Reviews

Produced by Humphrey Bogart's Santana Productions, Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950) uses a murder mystery to delve into the questionable side of Hollywood violence and the potentially dangerous turmoil beneath Bogart's tough surface. Bogart's troubling performance as a man who seems to enjoy imagining murders of women a bit too much lends an eerie edge to his relationship with Gloria Grahame's starlet Laurel Gray, rendering Dix an all-too-believable suspect in another woman's murder. Even as Andrew Solt's screenplay suggests possible reasons for Dix's isolation and distress, it eschews pat conclusions about Dix's "artistic temperament" as a screenwriter. Ray's jittery, ominous, film noir style instead suggests that Dix's potential violence comes from within, with Hollywood as both an outlet and an excuse for lethal male fantasies. Whether seen as a reflection of Ray's then-disintegrating marriage to the put-upon Grahame or as an interrogation of Bogart's cool Philip Marlowe/Sam Spade persona, In a Lonely Place presents one of the darkest portraits of Hollywood in a period haunted by the Communist blacklist and the studios' financial uncertainty.