Why In A Lonely Place is a Dangerous Movie by Craig Hammill

Last week, we did a 35mm double bill of Orson Welles’ 1947 The Lady From Shanghai and Nicholas Ray’s 1950 In A Lonely Place. Both are stone cold classics.

What struck this programmer was how In A Lonely Place was the more disturbing of the two, even though Lady From Shanghai traffics in many more murders in much more byzantine ways.

And maybe that’s the answer right there. The Lady From Shanghai (a movie this Programmer is obsessed with) has the joy of cinema pulsing through its icy noir veins. We get a little distance from the marital discord, murder, and violence via Orson Welles’ consummate craft and Baroque style. Which is a character unto itself.

But when we watch In A Lonely Place, no such cinematic silk pajamas warm us. This is a movie that grabs you by the throat as hard as Humphrey Bogart’s disturbed violent screenwriter Dix Steel grabs the throat of Gloria Grahame’s increasingly unsettled lover Laurel Gray.

To be clear, this programmer isn’t making a qualitative statement of preference here. Both movies are wild and inspiring. But this programmer is saying he learned something:

Movies which feel like they could happen. . .in fact may happen all the time…are much more disturbing because they knock down that illusory wall of security we have with film. Movies about stress, domestic violence, mental health, human hypocrisy get under our skin because we know a few wrong steps and we ourselves might make the same mistakes we see onscreen.

If you’ve never seen the noir classic In A Lonely Place: the story is simple and disturbing. Talented screenwriter Dixon Steele (a white hot Humphrey Bogart) is suspected of the murder of a coat check employee he took home with him the night before. The movie plays it vague and ambiguous. And Steele doesn’t help any with his sarcasm with the police, his unsettling temper, and history of violent behavior. But a fellow tenant in his apartment complex, Laurel Gray (played with intelligence and adult emotion by Gloria Grahame), confirms she saw Steele stay in for the night after the murder victim left, giving him an alibi.

Dix and Laurel are attracted to each other right away (though the reasons may be more disturbing and sexual than either wants to admit) and soon get involved in a romantic relationship that initially seems good for them both. Dix writes a screenplay, Laurel provides him stability and support and insight. But bit by bit, Dix’s jealousy, paranoia, and innate violence (possibly developed during his time as a World War II soldier) bubbles up and Laurel painfully comes to realize she feels Dix MAY have killed the girl. And that she needs out of the relationship.

Like characters in other Nicholas Ray movies (James Mason’s painkiller addicted teacher in Bigger Than Life jumps to mind), Dix and Laurel stun us with their modernity. These do NOT feel like two lovers in your typical Hollywood escapist romance. These feel like all too real people we know who are making mistakes in real time we’ve made or could make and find themselves in situations they regret and have no idea how to improve.

In A Lonely Place is a double nightmare. It’s the nightmare of a woman who realizes the partner she loves is toxic, violent, and smothering. It’s also the nightmare of a talented individual who can’t overcome his own demons and mental health issues.

Maybe the worst part of the nightmare is the movie’s fear that we can’t really change or that it takes an almost supernatural strength to overcome our worst tendencies.

Director Ray and actor Grahame were in a failing marriage at the time they made the movie together. So it makes sense the movie would embody their own mercurial disenchantment. But Ray inherited the script and even shot the original ending (which he hated) which had Dix actually killing Laurel then finishing his script.

Ray felt (rightly) that this ending was melodramatic and killed the power of the piece. Because if Dix kills Laurel then of course Dix is a monster. And that allows us to keep a safe distance and see the movie as just a movie. Instead, Ray, Bogart, and Grahame improvised a second ending and shot it. And it is this second ending that stays in the movie. An ending much more ambiguous, tragic, true to real dysfunctional relationships that are still bound by a sincere love.

It’s always hard to parse out exactly what movies can and should do best. Of course the answer is that they can do anything and should do almost everything. And folks come to movies for different reasons. But Ray and his collaborators proved with In A Lonely Place that really great movies can also hit very close to home. Reach up and wrap fingers around the back of your neck out in the theater and squeeze a little too hard.

In A Lonely Place is a dangerous movie. It’s an important movie. It doesn’t offer any easy answers. But it does pose absolutely crucial questions.

Craig Hammill is the founder.programmer of Secret Movie Club.