In A Lonly Place (1950)

 While containing mystery and nourish plot elements 'In A Lonely Place' is really about a couple, who while they genuinely love each other, simpley should not be together. In the hands of director Nicholas Ray this is a very meta movie. Ray's surragate Dixon Steel (played by Humphrey Bogart) is a screenwriter (as opposed to a director) in the process of very loosely adapting a novel; 'In A Lonely Place' is also very loosley adapted from its source material. Ray directs his then wife Gloria Graham in the story of a doomed relationship even while their own real marriage was falling apart. While the two remained very professional onset they seperated mid filming, with Ray moving into the set of Bogarts apartment, its self modeled on Ray's former home at the Chateau Marmont.

Steel is suspected in the death of a young woman who was last seen in his company, Graham is Steel's new neighbor Laurel Gray, an aspiring actress who provides his alabi. Laurel did legtimelty see him bid his ill fated visitor goodbye and then return to his bungalow, but as she went to bed shortly there after she can't be sure he didn't leave. She wants to believe he's innocent, the two are very quickly taken with each other, becoming nearly inseparable, they talk of marriage. Yet an impulsive and quick to anger part of Dixon is becoming increasingly noticeable to Laurel, doubts start to form and do battle with her love. Steel starts to pick up on this vibe, which only quickness his anger. They are both 'in a lonely place' and sooner or later somethings going to give.

Bogart gives a solid performance and Graham does some of her best work here. Film's in which Ray has a large amount of control over the supporting casting tend to be better then those where he dosen't; the directors instincts in this regard tend to run a little out of the box, old friends, lesser knowns, has beens and non professionals. Art Smith and Robert Warwick have memorable turns, black jazz singer Hadda Brooks has multiple scenes, and Frank Lovejoy makes good of the part of Dixon's old war buddy now investigating him for murder.

The film plays a little off kilter for a movie of its time, it's both airy and tight, not alot happens on the surface but the subtext is almost crowded. Dixon's anger is erratic and intense, scary in a way a typical movie tough of the era was not. We know he has an artists soul, we know he lives rigorously by an internal code but we come to know increasingly as the film progresses that he is capable of murder, though the movie wisely waits until the last minute to tell us if he killed the girl or not. 

Solid and understated, at times this movie feels more like something out of the "New Hollywood" of the 1970's then a product of the old studio system. The film is small in scale and the story ultimately not that deep, but the execution is artful and the cast turns in a handful of really engaging performaces. Ray is on game behind the camera even as his life beyound it was falling apart.  ***