Last night I watched Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place. It's the kind of movie that I will probably wind up watching more than once, and writing about at length. (And getting paid for it? Would be nice, but not the main thing.) I'll keep it short here, but it's safe to call it one of the highlights of the first wave of film noir pictures after the war.
It's also a movie from the last leg of Humphrey Bogart's film career. It's a fascinating and revealing use of his talent. He plays a screenwriter wrongfully accused of killing a coat check girl he brought home so she could summarize a book he's supposed to adapt and doesn't want to read. There's some indication he's thought about seducing her as well but her naive personality kills it for him. While it's obvious from the start that he's innocent of this particular crime, there's also the sense that he's, if not a full-blown psychopath, at least a highly troubled and dangerous man. He killed when he was in uniform, and it's never completely gotten out of his system.
As an actor Bogart was full of tics and pauses that worked their way into a kind of charm. The charm isn't gone in this film, but you can never trust it. Even when he's riding high he's only seconds away from being swallowed by his demons. In a Lonely Place is a high wire act for him much as White Heat was for James Cagney.
It's also a movie from the last leg of Humphrey Bogart's film career. It's a fascinating and revealing use of his talent. He plays a screenwriter wrongfully accused of killing a coat check girl he brought home so she could summarize a book he's supposed to adapt and doesn't want to read. There's some indication he's thought about seducing her as well but her naive personality kills it for him. While it's obvious from the start that he's innocent of this particular crime, there's also the sense that he's, if not a full-blown psychopath, at least a highly troubled and dangerous man. He killed when he was in uniform, and it's never completely gotten out of his system.
As an actor Bogart was full of tics and pauses that worked their way into a kind of charm. The charm isn't gone in this film, but you can never trust it. Even when he's riding high he's only seconds away from being swallowed by his demons. In a Lonely Place is a high wire act for him much as White Heat was for James Cagney.
2 comments:
This is a Bogart film neither of us had heard of previously. Since it isn't to be found on Netflix or Youtube (in any watchable format) I looked for it on our library's data base and found it there. Now we're fifth in line so that's not too bad. Last winter when I put a hold on a book I felt like reading I was nineteeth in line. By the time they notified me it was available (last week) I'd lost any interest in reading it.
Your review of this one makes it sound very interesting.
btw: I too hope all goes well. Crow's hat said HMS Distresse - drawn for a post about Boyan Slat's Ocean Cleanup plan.
I like to think this is one you're going to like. Definitely I expect it to make an impression, as it certainly did on me.
If you were the nineteenth in line the library system must not be prepared for the volume of borrowers. But yeah, it can be frustrating. I hope your reaction to the book wasn't a disappointment entirely because of that.
Things are okay in general. The change I emailed about isn't as good as I hoped, but in a way it's good I found out early on. Now to change again, this time more wisely (one hopes.)
Hooray for the Ocean Cleanup.
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