In a Lonely Place (1950)

Although it has been described as one of the 100 best mystery films, for me In a Lonely Place place was one of Humphrey Bogart’s least famous movies. We meet Dixon Steele in a bar. We immediately see that Dixon is a man with a violent temper but a soft heart. He is kind to Charlie, the fading silent movie star, who was once famous and is now ignored and mocked by the industry patrons. He pays the man’s bar bills, banters with him and defends him with his fists, when the son-in-law of a big movie mogul tries to humiliate Charlie. We can also understand why Dixon has almost become persona non grata in Hollywood. He hasn’t written his screen play in years. He ridicules the movers and shakers and he doesn’t want to play “the game“. He needs another hit,Much to the chagrin of his longtime agent, Mel. Mel is kind hearted and loyal. He was with Dixon in his heyday and he is not about to abandon him now during a slump, but he kindly nudges Dixon to write, trying to rekindle the ambition he once had. Dixon sharp, scathing tongue tell us that he is still creative inside. His mind is always blazing. But setting that cognitive spark to paper is just not something he’s been interested in doing lately. Right now he is supposed to read a popular book and to write the screenplay for it. The job is a piece of cake, because he has Strict orders to follow the novel exactly and not deviated from it. So he should be able to write the script in his sleep. Clearly, the problem with that is they don’t need a first class author to mechanically turn a book into a script. They don’t want his talent or imagination. As he enters the bar, the hat check girl is probably reading the very book that he supposed to convert to screen. She is a nobody to the Hollywood types that frequent the restaurant, but Dixon speaks to her pleasantly. She is certainly as interesting to him as the self-important, but dumb industry people that surround him. The bar clears out after Dixon abrawls with the son-in-law of the big film producer. The fact that the bar owner doesn’t mind and the waiters are gracious to him establishes that Dixon has been good to them in the past. he may not have had a hit in years, but he is treated like a star by the restaurant workers and his sins forgiven, though the owner does ask him to take his fights outside A fashionable actress, a former paramour, stops by Dixon’s table as she leaves. She seems successful enough not to need him, but she wants him.He gives her a brush off and she wonders if he antagonizes every woman or is it just her. He says that he was nice to her. She counters\ yes he was nice, but not nice to her. I am not sure what this means. Later we hear that she filed a police report against him for domestic violence, but she later withdrew the charges. But in her interactions with him, where she doesn’t mention the abuse and wants to ingratiate herself, it’s hard to believe that there was physical violence. Did he treat her badly? Is that why she views him as a nice person even though he wasn’t nice to her? To me, she just acts like a woman who never got the attention from him that she craved. There is no resentment there, just perhaps a tiny hope that things will change in the future. She seems more to be a victim of his disinterest than his brutality. Furthermore, when he says that he was nice to her, I take him at face value. He’s a bad guy, but not one that doesn’t regret his bad acts. Eventually he would at least offer her something to make up for his past behavior, but he doesn’t act like he owes her anything. He asks the hat check girl, Mildred, to go home with him, because she has read the script and he has not. She says she must be getting home to her aunt Cora and her date for the evening, Henry. But when he convinces her he just wants to pick her brain about the book and not to disrobe her, she consents to go home to his place. They arrive at his apartment and she wanders around the courtyard. She’s curious and impressed. He takes her hand and tries to pull her back to his place. A woman walks in and she passes between them, walking right through the couple, rather than around. If they had been dating, you might say that this gesture usurped on Mildred’s territory. Is that woman a neighbor of his Mildred wants to know. Dix says no he’s never seen her before. Well, I would point out that the fact that he’s never seen her before does not mean that she is not his neighbor. The woman climbs the stairs, towards another apartment. In his apartment he makes Mildred a nonalcoholic drink. When he goes into his bedroom and puts on his robe, she thinks he’s making a pass at her, but he assures her that he just wants to be comfortable. He tells her to give him the plot of the story in the book. The book has all the elements present in the movie plot. An untimely death, love, jealousy and a break up. The story is so second rate that Dixon doesn’t even want to attempt to read it himself. Mildred screams help while enacting the story and he hushes her. He tells Mildred to keep on talking while he’s in his bedroom and from his bedroom he sees His neighbor, looking at him from her balcony. And she is unabashed. She doesn’t turn away when she gets caught looking. Luckily, she can see Mildred was fine after screaming for help. Mildred broke a date with her boyfriend to be with Dixon. When Dixon asks about the boyfriend Mildred says that he has a nice job and discusses how stable he is. From that Dixon divines that she does not love him. She admits as much. Having summarized the book for him, even though she could never get the heroine’s name right, it’s Althea not Alethea, Dixon is ready to send Mildred home. He is not going to drive her but he gives her money for the cab. The next time we see him a police officer is knocking at his door. It takes a while for Dixon to answer. He says he was asleep. The officer is Brub Nikolai. In the army, Dixon was his commanding officer and Nikolai likes Dix. He asks Dixon why he didn’t answer the door and Dix says because he was asleep. Nikolai says that his supervisor wants Dix to come down to the station and answer questions. The woman that was at Dixon’s house last night, Mildred, was murdered and her body dumped on the road. Dixon has no reaction to the news, he doesn’t express regret or much interest. He says that she was there to read him a story and nothing more. Nikolai thinks giving her $20 for a taxi was a lot and Dixon says that she performed a service for him, reading a book that he did not want to read. He is happy to go down to the station. When he goes into his room to get dressed, Nikolai follows him in and is relieved to see that the bedsheets are ruffled. He concludes that Dixon really was asleep like he said. At the police station Nicolai’s boss, Lochner, is interviewing Dixon’s neighbor, Laurel Gray, a former actress who used to date a big real estate agent. She recently broke up with him. She says that she saw Dixon bid Mildred goodbye at his door. She doesn’t know what he did after that, she just knows that the girl left alone. The supervisor grudgingly takes Gray’s words as an alibi for Dixon. Dixon comes in to the office and sees her. Gray observes that Dickson has a nice face.The supervisor wonders if Gray and Dixon are friends but Dixon says that he’s never seen her before, which is a repeat of what he told Mildred last night. The supervisor says that Dix is free to go. He offers to take Gray home, but she says that she always leaves with the man who brought her. In this case the man is a police officer. Dixon stops outside of a flower shop where a black man is watering the pavement. Dix calls the man “pal” and is polite. He gives him money and says he wants to send 2 dozen white roses to Mildred Atkinson. The man asks him if he has an address. He says no but it should be in the papers because Mildred was murdered last night. It’s funny he doesn’t ask to send the flowers to her family, even though he knows she lives with her aunt Cora. He asked to send them to her, although she is dead. Even though he has shown no sympathy about her death, The flowers indicate that he cares on some level. Or that he’s just polite. Back at the apartment complex, Gray comes over and asks him to keep her name out of the paper. He says sometimes it’s easier to get your name in the paper than to keep it out.Dixon and Grey talk. He says that he admires her for being so frank and saying what she feels. He saw her looking at him last night. She says he has a nice face. He goes to the mirror and looked at himself and said she must be crazy to think that he has a nice face. Then he comes back and steps close to her. He leans down. She says that she said he had a nice face but she didn’t say she wanted to kiss it. He wonders why she doesn’t want any publicity. He guesses that she is hiding from her ex real estate agent boyfriend. She says something like that. He says they can have dinner that night. She says yes but they will both be having dinner alone, not together. Dix says that she’s the type of woman who leaves before she gets hurt. She agrees. She says that she wants to give things a second thought before she jumps in. He says well what has she decided about them she said that that she is only given them one thought. He wonders when she will give them a second thought. She said she will let him know. He says that she should do so before noon tomorrow. Nikolai‘s boss has asked him to ask Dixon to dinner, to sort of gauge his behavior. Nikolai feels guilty about doing that but he is newly married. He tells Dixon his wife wants to meet him. And he invites him to dinner. When Mel confronts him about the death, Dixon refuses to tell him whether he did it or not. With Mel’s connections, what can Mel do if he’s guilty? Dixon teasingly wants to know. Mel says that he can get him smuggled out of the country and he is ready to do it. When Laurel comes and Mel discovers that she gave Dixon an alibi he is relieved. She gave him the relief that Dixon refused to give. At dinner with Nikolai they talk about the murder. Dixon is very detached like he was talking about characters in a book, rather than a flesh and blood woman that was just in his apartment last night. He says that he did not kill her because he would never just dump her body callously on the side of the road. And we can see there’s some truth in that. He may be cold but he is not a savage. The woman died of asphyxiation. He describes what might’ve happened and has Nicholai and his wife demonstrate. The woman was in the car with her killer, they were parked in a lonely place and he put his arm around her while at the wheel and choked her in the crook of his elbow. Nikolai gets so involved in a demonstration that he almost hurts his wife. She pulls away. Dixon says that he has to go. If he’s lucky he may have a date. When Dixon leaves she tells her husband there’s something wrong with the man. That he was stimulated about the murder, thinking about it. For me she should be asking what is wrong with her husband that he would get so engrossed in a good story that he almost hurt her. Nikolai knows that his wife took psychiatry in school, but he doesn’t much like her jumping to conclusions about his former commanding officer. Back at his apartment complex Dixon knocks on Laurel’s door. She is on the telephone talking to Martha. He asks who Martha is and she says it’s a woman who is the last remnant from her days as an actress. Every two weeks Martha beats her black and blue. Laurel announces that she has thought about them and she is interested. He kisses her. No dillydallying. He just cuts right to the chase. He says, “I've been looking for someone for a long time. I didn't know her name or where she lived. I'd never seen her before. When a girl was killed - and because of that, I found what I was looking for. Now I know your name, where you live, and how you look.” He asks when she decided that she was interested. She says about 3 o’clock. Dixon says she just let him simmer and didn’t tell him right away. She would have let him wait another day. The next time we see them it’s like they’ve been and established couple forever. She is in his place trying to wrestle him away from the typewriter because he has not slept in days. She is closing all the blinds and telling him to get into bed. She catches Mel looking in through the window and invites him in. She and Mel are fast friends. She entered and became the perfect third wheel in his relationship with Dixon. He says he wishes he had found her earlier because she is a great muse for Dixon. He is writing nonstop. He hasn’t written like this since before the war. Charlie, the washed up actor comes over and it seems that he does this regularly, to borrow money from Dixon. While Dix obediently goes to bed, Laurel grabs the money and gives it to Charlie. She has fit seamlessly into Dixon‘s life and his friends are her own. We see them go out for dinner. They sit by a piano as the club entertainer sings, “I Hadn’t Anyone Til You.” It’s such an obvious song choice, but Bogart at the piano reminds me of Sam in CasaBlanca. He lights a cigarette and gives it to her. I think they are trying to be all Paul Heinreid right about it and to create cigarette fame, but they make a cute couple, charming, charmed and in love. Then a police officer enters the restaurant with his wife. Dix feels that the wife is just a cover; he has been followed, because he is under suspicion and they leave, with him angry. If he really is being followed, I don’t think his anger there is out of place. Laurel and Dixon share the same maid who frets because since they run back-and-forth between his and her apartment, she never gets to thoroughly clean either place. We see Laurel with Martha the masseuse who is angry that she is waiting on Dixon hand and foot, allowing her life to be subsumed by his.. She takes her anger out on Laurel’s body. Martha complains that Laurel types for him and does everything that he needs. Martha says that she should have a life of her own and seems to wish that she would go back to the real estate agent. Laurel has enough of Martha’s criticism and tells her off. Martha says that she’ll be begging Martha to come back, because Martha is the only friend she has. The only person she has to turn to, when it all goes wrong. Laurel has no one else. This is a sad commentary on Laurel’s life. And it brings up the point that we don’t know anything about their pasts, their families. We just know that they were both in a lonely place, the kind of deserted highway where Mildred was when she was killed as Dixon envisions it. Laurel is called back to the police station. Nikolai’s supervisor Lochner is Cynical. She said she didn’t know him yet they’re inseparable. She says that they didn’t know each other when she was last at the police station or when she saw him with Mildred, but she started typing for him after And she admits they are in love. Lochner tells her that Dix has a history of violence, fights with men and also with a girlfriend who later wouldn’t press charges. Laurel bristles at the veiled accusations Against Dixon and Is unhappy when the supervisor let’s on that Nikolai reported back on Dickson after Dickson had dinner at Nicolai’s Place. Afterwords the supervisor guesses that Nikolai is mad that he broke his confidence by telling Laurel Ni kolai spied at dinner. Nikolai just grimaces. He doesn’t look as guilty as he should be. Dixon takes Laurel with him for another evening with Nikolai. They are all four spread out on the sand and Dixon is carefree his head in Laurel’s lap. Nikolai’s wife mentions Laurel’s second visit to the police station. Dixon did not know about it and he is angry. The wife apologizes for saying anything she promised Nikolai she would not. Dixon runs out and Laurel runs after him. He wants to drive off without her and she has to grab the passenger door and get in while the car is still moving. They drive along the curving highway at a dangerous speed. But she doesn’t tell him to stop or to slow down. He hits another car and then is angry with the driver, even though it was his fault; the driver starts calling Dickson names, calls him a squirrel and Dixon beats him up. Dixon has him on the ground and picks up a large rock to hit him with. Laurel is screaming at him to stop. She tells him he will he will kill the man. He pulls away and gets back in the car and they are both shaken. He says the attack was justified. Didn’t she hear what that man called him? The awful names? Yes he called him a squirrel Laurel says, indicating that that was not the worst name she has ever heard. Dixon has to see the humor in that. He calms down. Ashamed.He recites to her that ‘I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.’ Those lines just came to him and he needs to find a way to incorporate them into the story he’s writing. Of course, they make an obvious epigraph to Laurel and Dix’s love. They are a bit heavy-handed. They were written to be memorable. But the fact that they come from Dix as an author and he doesn’t say them directly about himself make the words a little more palatable. The end of this relationship has been foreshadowed throughout the movie. It’s in the book that he’s converting to a screenplay. The foreshadowing was there when he told Laurel that she was the kind who left before she got hurt. It’s there when he puts his arm around her, her neck in the crook, the same way he theorized that Mildred died. And it’s certainly in these lines of being born, of living, of dying.He must have known, Since she saw him with a rock in his hand about to kill a man, that his time with her was limited. We know that it ends, but when he says he was born when she kissed him it also tells us about his beginning and middle. How empty his life was before, even with past success. Laurel goes back to see Nikolai’s wife, when they can be alone and talk. She tells her that Dixon is not normal. Although the wife said the same thing to her husband herself, she tried to take a different tact with Laurel and pretended that she was happy that they were together. Laurel is scared of Dixon. I don’t know if we are supposed to perceive Laurel as believing Dixon is guilty of Mildred’s murder. I don’t think he is and I don’t get the sense that she thinks he is. But she knows he rages out of control over minor things. Next we see Dix head to her apartment. He has been calling her on the phone. The maid says that she cannot hear anything because she takes those sleeping pills. Since when he wants to know? He wants the maid to stop noisily vacuuming.The maid says that she wishes that they would just go on and get married so that she would finally have a chance to clean their apartments. Her bedroom door is closed but he can hear her alarm going off. He tells her to turn it off and go back to sleep. She says that she cannot because the clock is too far away from her. He says that he can turn it off. Is it all right if he comes in. She says yes. He comes in, turns off the clock and asks her if she wants to stay in bed. She says no; she will get up and get breakfast. He says he does not want her to. He will make it. I do not know what the scene is for. It shows their familiarity. But it also shows that he is polite enough to ask before he enters her bedroom even though he has clearly been in there before. That way when he demands entry later, the difference is jarring. Laurel appears to be sleeping nude. We see her bare shoulders and chest. He kisses her shoulder. No modesty between them. And he is solicitous, not wanting to bother her if she needs rest. He doesn’t expect her to wait on him hand and foot, as Martha complained. He looks at the pills on her bedside and reads the label. In the kitchen he is trying to cut into a grapefruit when she walks in. He straightened out the knife to cut around the edge of the grapefruit. When she comes in she calls him a fool. What happened to the grapefruit knife? He says he straightened it. She said it is supposed to be curved. Now I don’t know what this interaction means. Are we supposed to notice the way he holds the grapefruit knife like it’s a dagger. He doesn’t look like he’s cutting fruit, so much as he looks like he’s attacking.Is she trying to straighten him out. And is he supposed to be curved? Mel says as much to her later. He says that if you took the violent temper out of Dix, the creativity would go with it. He knows because he tried in the past. Dix cooperated when Mel tried to cure him, but it took away Dix’s personality. Dix asks her about the pills and why she didn’t tell him that she was taking them. She didn’t think it was important she claims. We see the strain that she has been under and so does he. He says the maid wants them to get married and that they should because they owe it to the poor maid. He says they can go to Vegas and do it. she begins to answer, but he cuts her off and tells her that it’s a yes or no question. No need for any elaboration. She says yes. He says they can go and buy a ring and be in Vegas immediately to do the deed. She has finished typing the screenplay for him. After the car accident when he pummeled the man, he must know their time is limited. That is why he is trying to rush her into a commitment. We see him stop off and leave a check for the man that he collided with on the road. It is enough to cover the damage to his car. Dixon is violent but he’s fair. I wouldn’t say that paying for the damage Equals contrition, but at least it’s an acknowledgment of responsibility. Mel comes by and he can see that Laurel is nervously packing. He guesses that she is going to leave Dixon and wishes that she could reconsider. She says that is not normal for him to torture his best friend and to fly off the handle because someone called him a name. There’s something wrong with Dix. Laurel says she will get a flight out of town that night. Mel hopes that if Dix finishes the novel and the producers like it maybe that will take his mind off of losing her. She says that she finished typing the novel this morning and Mel says that he will turn it into the production company himself. He says that if the book is a hit, that Dixon won’t care about anything else. And this is something that I did not guess about Dixon. He sneered at the movie industry. I did not conclude that perhaps much of his recent despair in life came from the fact that he was a has been. I also did not know that his love for Laurel could be superseded by a return to fame. Mel asks why she agreed to Mary Dixon if she feels this way. She says that she was scared. I thought she would say she was torn between her left for him and her concern, but she’s not torn. She says that she will write to Mel. He says that he doesn’t want to know her address because if Dixon asked him for it he would have to give it. Another sign of his loyalty. He tells her that when she’s ready, she can write to Dix directly and then maybe That will mean that she’s ready to come back to them. (Mel considers her leaving as leaving both him and Dixon.) She says that she hopes so. This gives me a glimmer of hope that maybe a separation between them will not be permanent. You do sort of root for them as a couple. He truly loves her and it’s a tender love, not the macho kind. Tender and desperate. Even though he is old enough to be her father in real life, you see that her attraction to him as possible. Bogart has a craggy face, but he’s fit, at least he’s slim and if he was good enough to attract Bacall, you can Easily see him attracting Gloria Grahame, who looks at him with quiet amusement and appreciation. With her short cut and suppressed smile she reminds me of Myrna Loy. She sparkles rather than smolders . When this movie was made, Gloria was married to the director. So he apparently did not have problems with his wife filming kissing scenes with Bogie. At the restaurant, everyone wants to see Laurel’s engagement ring, but she is despondent. Mel is gleeful and tells Laurel that the movie studio loved the screenplay. He is surprised because it is nothing like the book and he thought that the studio would be mad about that because they asked that Dixon stick to the book. Dixon’s past love is at the dinner table with them, but there is no rivalry between her and Laurel. Dix introduces her as the woman who was in pursuit. Again, he doesn’t act like he abused her.The actress says that she heard there might be a part for her in his new screenplay. At that Dixon is furious who has seen his screenplay? He learns that Mel gave it to the studio. Laurel admits that she gave Mel the manuscript. He is mad but he says it’s not her fault. Mel should’ve known better. He asked Mel why he felt the need to give it to the studio now? What was the urgency? Why did he time at this way?He hits Mel. Laurel is shocked. Mel is an older man and if Laurel wasn’t convinced that leaving was the right thing to do before, she certainly is now. I am surprised too.i didn’t think he would hit someone weaker than he was. Before he had only hit young men. Dixon goes into the bathroom m self-conscious, sorry And asks Mel if he should get a new agent. Mel indicates that he will stick around, despite everything. Dixon says that Mel should remind him to buy him a new tie. This is something that he said to Mel earlier in the movie and I guess it’s a repeat of his need to buy things for people he has hurt. This is his way of making it up to Mel, By taking care of him after having hurt him. Dixon wonders why Laurel is acting so strangely that evening.The waiter says that there is a phone call for Laurel. Would she like him to bring the phone? She says no. With gritted teeth,Dixon insists that she take it at the table where everyone can hear. I thought that it was going to be the man with her plane tickets to New York on the other end, but it wasn’t. He is menacing and I am somewhat surprised. I suppose I did not really believe he was that far out of control. I think I thought her fear was exaggerated, justified but bit off the mark. Back at her apartment she hurriedly packs to leave, but Dixon shows up. He sees that her engagement ring is missing. She says she took it off in the bedroom. He orders her to get it.She tells him to stop ordering her around and says that she does not like to be rushed. And that is something that she said early on in the movie. That she likes to take her time before getting involved. Their whirlwind romance has done everything but take its time. He wants her to go and get her ring. He goes himself and finds that the bedroom door is locked. He thinks that she must have her old boyfriend in there. She says that she will open it. She runs in first and tears up a goodbye letter that she had drafted for him. He sees the suitcase on the bed and surmises she was packing to leave. She was going to leave him with no forwarding address just like she did her last boyfriend.She denies it and says that she was packing to go on their trip. Then the telephone rings and it’s the travel agent calling about her trip to New York. He knows that she was leaving him, now. She says she wasn’t. She tries to talk her way out of it, promises they will marry immediately, but he calls her a liar, says she will run at the first opportunity and he throws her on the bed with his hands around her throat as she screams. Realizing what he is doing, he stops. She gets up and suddenly she is the one with the power, standing straight and strong, and he is broken because he knows that his conduct was irrevocable. The telephone rings and he picks it up. They tell him they have found the killer. It was Mildred’s boyfriend. He passes the phone to Laurel so they can tell her and she says deadly into the receiver that if they had gotten this news yesterday it would’ve made all the difference. Now it means nothing. Dejected, he doesn’t try to plead his case, he walks away. We see him walking towards his apartment down below and his lone silhouette frames the archway. I don’t really agree with her that if she had gotten the news yesterday that it would’ve made all the difference. I still didn’t have the sense that she felt he was guilty of murder. This is not like Cary Grant in Suspicion where you’re wondering if he did or did not do it. At least I was not and I did not get the feeling that she was. Instead I feel that she knew he is capable of murder. It is not what he might’ve done, but what he may do.She knows that one day he could be a murderer. One day he could murder her. And I think it’s refreshing that in 1950 they showed a woman who is in love, who is ready to walk out. She was ready to go and planning to go, before it led to physical abuse. When she saw his temper directed at others, that let her know that she did not want to stay and have it directed at her. She did not think her love was worth violence. And since most movies of the time showcased characters who thought a little violence towards women was acceptable and since society continued to think this until very recently, it is refreshing to see a woman draw the line and decide she’s not going to be with a man like that, no matter how she loves him. While Mel or Nikolai’s wife might’ve thought that the love of a good woman could change Dixon, Laurel did not think that and did not want to wait and see. She did not want to be that “good woman” who sacrificed herself, although the world would not have batted an eye if she had. She put self-preservation first and was never the doormat. Even though she had nowhere and no one to go to, unless you count Martha, she was planning to get out before letting him control and mistreat her. And we have the lines he recited to know what happens next. He lives for those weeks that she loved him and he died when she left. There was no question that his next screenplay would be successful. In the bar they told him How hard it was to have a come back.But writing was not the come back the audience was looking for. For us the question was whether he could pull himself from the precipice and maintain this faltering relationship, after having shaken her faith in it. He could not.