Los Angeles. Dixon Steele is a washed-up, ill-tempered Hollywood screenwriter whose best days are behind him. His manager Mel tries to persuade him to adapt a popular novel into a screenplay, but Steele is so lazy he instead invites a woman who read the novel, Mildred, to his place to have her tell him the novel's story. Realizing Mildred is not interested in him, Steele sends her home during the night. The next day, Steele is summoned by the police because Mildred is found killed, and he is one of the suspects. Steele is supported by his neighbor, Laurel, who starts a relationship with him. However, Steele's negative and bitter behavior cause Laurel second thoughts. After Steele proposes her, Laurel accepts, but then changes her mind, fearing he might have indeed killed Mildred. When the police call Laurel and inform her that Steele has been cleared of murder, it is already too late, since Steele's relationship is ruined.
Excellent drama "In a Lonely Place", which coincidentally premiered with two other movies deconstructing the Hollywood show business, "All About Eve" and "Sunset Boulevard", was at first unjustifiably neglected among Humphrey Bogart's opus. One of the reasons probably lie in character Dixon Steele: unlike "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", where Bogart played a character who was at least initially sympathetic, but later on became uncaring, or "The Maltese Falcon", where he was a charming outsider, here Bogart plays a character who is a completely unlikeable, unredeemable, selfish and unsympathetic anti-hero from start to finish. This is already demonstrated in the police interrogation sequence, where Steele is completely indifferent when the Inspector informs him that Mildred has been found murdered: "You puzzle me, Mr. Steele". - "Well, I grant you, the jokes could've been better, but I don't see why the rest should worry you - that is, unless you plan to arrest me on lack of emotion". He is a grouchy, even violent nihilist, though, as the title hints it, this may have been caused by his loneliness, as he started to act at least tolerable when he began a relationship with Lauren. The director Nicholas Ray treats the whole film as an elegant piece of fatalism, in which Steele is never able to escape his fate, and is resigned that he is only worth something when he makes money for the studio, not when he writes quality that doesn't sell. Mildred just might be a symbol for Steele's last remains of optimism and sense of joy, which was killed in this society, leaving him stuck in an endless dread. The snappy dialogues are wonderful and very quotable ("You have sent the son-in-law business back 50 years"; "It was his story against mine, but of course, I told my story better."; "I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me"), whereas despite a rather overstretched second half and a couple of lukewarm moments, "In a Lonely Place" works even today, and thus with time obtained the status of a classic that it deserved.
Grade:+++
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