Anyone else feel like an extension? I always considered the conversation around the list more important than the list themselves, and the conversation here has kind of slowed down, so maybe it'll help rekindle enthusiasm (although it could easily help reduce it by prolonging it), and there are certainly always more films to be viewed, and write-ups to be done... Just throwing it out there.
---------------------------------------
Less a piece of criticism, more an appreciation. Despite the length, there are only minor spoilers, some regarding the end, but nothing that would destroy a viewing, so feel free to read. With that said, if you haven't seen this film yet, you have no excuse...
In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)
Perhaps the most personal of all
film noirs,
In a Lonely Place is a film I always found difficult to approach. It’s both a monumental entree in the genre, yet a film that is so easy to underestimate, even while watching it. While one can try to write objectively about the film on a thematic level – Ray’s masterful use of space, its subversive edge, its autobiographical parallels – that only scratches the surface. The true power of Ray’s film comes on that most intangible and subject level, that of feeling and emotion. It’s the film’s wounded intimacy and emotional vulnerability, its doomed romanticism, its ability to capture the solitude and insecurity that drives people together, and the way its turns around and pulls them apart: it is this which gives the film its power. Perhaps the best description of this quality I can give comes not from film criticism, but from music. From Nick Cave’s lecture, “The Secret of the Love Song”:
Nick Cave wrote:“The love song is never truly happy. It must first embrace the potential for pain. Those songs that speak of love without having within in their lines an ache or a sigh are not love songs at all but rather Hate Songs disguised as love songs, and are not to be trusted. These songs deny us our humanness and our God-given right to be sad and the air-waves are littered with them. The love song must resonate with the susurration of sorrow, the tintinnabulation of grief. The writer who refuses to explore the darker regions of the heart will never be able to write convincingly about the wonder, the magic and the joy of love for just as goodness cannot be trusted unless it has breathed the same air as evil… so within the fabric of the love song, within its melody, its lyric, one must sense an acknowledgment of its capacity for suffering.”
The film excels as an examination of love because its ability to balance both the joy and sorrow of love. Many romantic films have moments of bliss and heartache, but they are parceled off, treated as two distinct states, or worse, used the same way danger is used in a suspense film, to hold the viewer capture until the grand reunion in the end. Or tinged in nostalgia, mementos of happiness after the downbeat ending of a breakup. Here, they are not distinct; the moments of joy hint at sorrow, the moments of sorrow contain a spark of joy, and the film largely exists between the two emotions, in a world of doubt and longing.
A difficulty in assessing the film is its inability to be pigeonholed within the familiarity of classical genre. It’s certainly a romantic melodrama, but with a level of trauma and ambiguity rare for the classical melodrama. The film contains a murder mystery, but is a secondary element, almost a MacGuffin, allowing Bogart and Grahame to meet. And while it definitely informs the film, it only shades the human drama at its center, it doesn’t drive it. It is not the study of a pathologically sick mind, the ways its source novel was (Nick Ray changes it so completely, one wonders whether he didn’t have his own hatcheck girl read it for him).
Film noir is all about crime, but here, the crimes aren’t legal or moral transgressions; they’re personal dilemmas, far too intimate for any definition of criminality. The films doubles as a Hollywood screed, and look at the way the film industry marginalizes and discards those around it; but it’s a minor element, kept in the background. It’s another of Ray’s study of the marginalized and dispossessed, the outcasts of Hollywood society, but the story never reaches the “us vs. them” dimensions of
Johnny Guitar or
Rebel Without a Cause, nor the subcultural submersion of
Hot Blood or
The Lusty Men. The film is fixated on the link between creativity and violence, the propensity for great artist to be less than upstanding private individuals, but that's not what it's really about. There is lastly the personal element, the Bogart-Grahame romance as a mirror to Ray’s own disintegrating marriage; a genuine sense of sorrow and anger pervades the film. One feels that if someone had given Ray a 16mm camera and free reign, he may have came out with a film as raw and searing as
Faces or
Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble; but this is not the 60s or 70s. The film's craft and its difficulty is in how far it is able to maintain this unflinching examination of romantic breakdown within the confines of the studio style.
As such, the film could be called a
non-thriller. The mystery at its center is neutered. It never becomes a “Bluebeard” story in the manner of
Suspicion or
The Stranger. There is no major goal driving the film. There are no moments of suspense or action. The closet the film comes is Bogart’s beating of the football star, a moment that is shocking for its randomness, the film’s protagonist lashing out at a character completely external to the plot. There is also the ending, but the film is careful to “solve” the mystery before it occurs, turning it into a moment of pure emotional trauma as opposed to suspense. It is actually a violent and very eventful film; it is simply that the violence is all internal, rarely external. The sling and arrows these characters quietly suffer are as powerful and felt as any fight scene or shootout in a regular
noir; one must simply be willing to perceive them.
If the classical narrative consists of rising and falling levels of conflict, and if the typical romance alternates between the highs and lows of love, then the best visual one can give to their structure is a succession of hills, with tall peaks and low valleys. This film suggests a new approach altogether;
In a Lonely Place is rather a long stretch of ocean, stretching as far as the eye can see, covering in incessant, criss-crossing, always-present waves. The waves are driven by different currents of emotion – love, hate, joy, sorrow, optimism, despair, humiliation, jealousy, rage, compassion, tenderness, intimacy – but they’re always there, simultaneous, amorphous, all part of the same body of water. One emotion may gain in intensity, but it can’t eliminate the others. Sometimes it whips into a torrent, other times it is present in ripples, but it always flowing, changing, carrying the story, shaping the relationships between characters, and capturing the inner-conflicts of the characters themselves. Ray always had a world of empathy and compassion for his characters, and here is no different. Even minor characters aren’t allowed to be simple types; they are allowed an inner world as rich and complex as the film itself.
This appraoch. of conflicting emotions becomes apparent from the first love scene. To be sure, Bogart’s meeting Gloria Graham in her room is a moment of
lovesickness, but it’s the rare moment that give as much weight to the
sickness as it does to the
love. Bogart confronts her, but already the dynamics are thrown off; Grahame is passive and quiet, Bogarts leads the conversation. Yet, it is Grahame who seems collected and calm, Bogart a nervous mess, ill-at-ease, fidgeting and stuttering. When he enters the room, he draws back until he is flat against the door and wall; for a moment, he looks like an animal trapped in a corner. Or a guilty man recoiling from some terrible thing he’s done, or in this case, something he may do later. His love manifests itself in intense emotion that seems to be physically agitating him from within. Grahame, on the other hand, doesn’t look like a woman who’s fallen head over heels in love. She isn’t carried away by emotion; she looks like a woman who has come to a rational decision after long deliberation. Even before she informs us that a butch ‘dyke’ masseuse is all she “has left of her acting career”, we sense this is a woman who’s fallen before, who’s been hurt in love before, but who has picked herself up wiser from the experience. This is a girl who knows love is a gamble, and won’t dash madly into it. Instead, she has thought long and hard about it, resigning herself to take the gamble again. Before they embrace, Ray places them in a two-shot – Grahame sitting, Bogart standing – that has Bogart towering over her with almost menacing proportion. The shot of Bogart even includes the ceiling, more claustrophobic than romantic. He descends on her, embraces her, kisses her. Bogart’s nervous agitation only becomes stronger, Grahame more passive and submissive, if not frightened. The camera moves in close, and it feels too intimate, as if we should feel guilty for peeking in on this private moment. This intimacy also belies a claustrophobic restriction of space. Bogart stooping over Grahame takes on an unsettling sense of “domination”. almost vampiric. He caresses her neck, but up close and in context, it echoes strangulation. George Antheil’s music already has a haunting quality to it, but when Bogart mentions the murder in passing, it quickly perks up into a foreboding melody, before reverting back. Bogart’s sweet-nothings don’t sound sweet at all; nervously muttered the way they are, they have a painful, uncertain, even unsettling quality. Here, at love’s very inception, Ray is already pointing towards its disintegration. Here, at its most new and blissful state, Ray is already hinting at its ability to cause suffering, even physical suffering.
I think it’s safe to say the Humphrey Bogart has never been better. Perhaps its not coincidental that he’s never looked worse. The bags under his eyes, the lines in his forehead, his boney-yet-hangdog cheeks – they’ve never been so pronounced. His face sometimes seems so tightly stretched around his face, it looks like a death mask. When it’s hit with low-key lighting, it sometimes has the property of a skull – a characteristic that speaks as much of naked vulnerability as it does malice. Under Ray’s deft hands, he captures his character’s dark-side brilliantly, and there are still some of the most believably rendered bursts of rage in all the cinema. Take the dinner scene near the end, where Bogart’s violently lashes out at his friend. It’s a frightening scene, as Bogart seems capable of murder at this point. But there’s more to it: he seems just as likely to break down and cry; not just a regular cry, but the sort of cry that comes from an infant, violent and seemingly capable of lasting forever. This balance is maintained throughout the film, Bogart is never just a total brute. Ray and Bogart understand the way rage is precipitated, accompanied and intensified by a sense of powerlessness and humiliation, and Dix Steel embodies it.
There’s also a magnetic quality too him. In this skid-row world of Hollywood has-beens and also-rans, Bogart’s Dix Steele has knack for attracting these outcast around him like satellites: Alix Talton’s Frances, who has suffered the full wrath of his anger, but can’t seem resist coming back as if nothing happened; Robert Warwick’s Charlie Wakeman, a former star-turned-drunk who’s drawn to Steele’s voluntary outcast status. Despite his hard luck, the studios still call after him to write their scripts. Even those on the outside are drawn in: Frank Lovejoy’s officer believes he’s innocent, but seems captivated by his violent creativity, as does his wife; his superior is so captivated by it, he stands convinced of his guilt. But the most crucial of these side characters is Art Smith’s Mel Lippman. This may be Bogart and Grahame’s romance, but Bogart and Lippman are the real abusive couple here. The ever-faithful Lippman looks after Bogart with a fatherly, or considering this is Ray, possibly homoerotic attachement, and yet Bogart responds by sabotaging his deals, mockingly torturing him, bullying him around, and ultimately attacking him. Yet Lippman always comes back, hurt yet loyal as ever. If one wants to emphasize the film’s parallels with
Sunset Boulevard, Lippman is this film’s Von Stroheim, focused on protecting Bogart, unable to allow him “to be destroyed”; but he doesn’t have that character’s level of personal access and control. He’s a sad, pitiful but well-intentioned man who emerges as one of the film’s most touching and sympathetic characters.
With Bogart’s magnetic power, and the film’s emphasis on male anxiety, it’s easy to ignore just how great Gloria Grahame is in this film.
Film noirs usually make the mistake of making a character like her so pure, innocent and glamorous as to be unbelievable in the middle of the genre’s sordidness – look at Alice Faye in
Fallen Angel, which I wrote about last, or Coleen Gray in
Kansas City Confidential (which I hope to write a bit about next). Gloria Grahame is a true “fallen angel”: she seems like a small glimmer of hope and beauty in this dark world, but she’s not uncompromised or unsullied by it. A failed actress walking out a trouble relationship, she seems like’s she’s picking herself up from the Hollywood underbelly that the other characters are still caught in, unable and unwilling to walk away from. Next time you watch the film, watch her eyes; that’s where all her acting is. Her rolling and dancing pupils, her fluttering lashes, her undulating eyebrows, her oscillating lids – she controls here eyes magnificently. It’s a subtle, economical means of expression that nevertheless captures complex, ever-changing emotions: exactly what the film requires.
And that ending… the saddest of all the genre. It’s a modern day
Othello, but here there is no external Iago to lay all our hate on; this is all personal demons. And the prevention of the murder here only expands the film’s tragic dimensions. Bogart’s last minute awakening of conscience is not enough to redeem him or the relationship, and in fact forces him to face his own irreconcilable brutality. And it would be wrong to place the tragedy all at Dix Steele’s feet, as one feels that Grahame voicing her true feelings could have averted the tragedy. More than just a study of inner-rage and male anxiety, the film charts the way distrust, doubt, dishonesty and a breakdown in communication can wedge itself in a relationship, and here, exacerbated by the police, showbiz and murder, ultimately crumbles the romance from within. It also speaks to the finale’s painful complexity. Watching it, one feels angry at Gray for her fear and deception, as if she could have saved the relationship simply by being open. Then we see her, tears in her eyes, heartbroken as much as if she’s traumatized, and one recoils from that opinion, feeling guilty that you blamed the victim, and knowing that Steele’s brutality would have inevitably emerged later if not now. Then one wants to blame Steele for that brutality; but then one sees him, head down, back to the camera, and finds him a shameful, wounded creature who simply can’t understand, let alone control, his own capacity for violence. It’s not about right or wrong. We’re ultimately left with two damaged, tortured souls. Bogart, walking out of the hacienda apartments, but stuck at the exit, stranded, not knowing where to go. And where can he go? Leave Hollywood and his career? Retreat into his alcoholism? An inevitable violent outburst that
does go too far? Suicide? Only one thing is certain, and that is loneliness: at the end, Steele realizes that his murderous desire for love can do nothing but sabotage and destroy, all his hopes dashed. And what about Gloria Grahame? She’s picked herself up once, and will probably pick herself up again… but can it ever be the same? "I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me” – the ultimate epigram for the impossibility of love.
And that is the film’s subject – the impossibility of love, and the ways relationships inevitable unravel. It’s a subject that can easily fall prey to narcissistic self-loathing. Why watch a film with such a depressing message?
They Live by Night may have been tragic, but one felt there that love was all that mattered in a mad world. This extends to films like
Johnny Guitar,
Rebel Without a Cause and
Party Girl, where love prevails in the face of a monstrous, uncaring society. And what about
On Dangerous Ground, which is almost acts as an answer to this film. Ryan is even more far-gone with violence and anxiety, Lupino is an even more tarnished angel, yet at the end, a glimmer of love’s healing powers still prevails, no matter how uncertain it is. But it’s perhaps not coincidental that these films ends just as the relationship begins, freed from external forces.
In a Lonely Place is a film that follows a relationship from beginning to end. Perhaps all that separates a tragic and happy romance is knowing where to stop the film?
Ultimately, the film works because of its honesty and empathy regarding the subject. This is
film noir as deeply personal confession. And just as the narrative navigates a relationship suspended between joy and sorrow, passion and rage, love and hate, so Ray’s vision navigate a cinema stranded between Hollywood populism and unflinching self-examination. It’s triumph is it’s ability to use the auspices of popular genre (romance, melodrama,
film noir, showbiz satire) to examine an inescapable loneliness that exists there.
