In A Lonely Place

Directed by Nicholas Ray, In A Lonely Place follows a hot-tempered screenwriter (Humphrey Bogart’s Dixon Steele) as he and Gloria Grahame’s Laurel Gray embark on a tumultuous relationship after she provides an alibi for him in a murder investigation. It’s an intriguing premise that’s employed to mildly watchable yet mostly underwhelming effect by Ray, as the filmmaker, working from Andrew P. Solt’s screenplay, delivers an often excessively deliberate drama that contains few elements designed to initially capture (and eventually sustain) the viewer’s interest – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by a momentum-free, meandering narrative that predominantly rests upon an unconvincing, uninvolving central coupling (ie both Dixon and Laurel seem to be harboring hidden agendas). There’s little doubt, then, that In A Lonely Place benefits substantially from the commanding, engaging efforts of its leads and a smattering of admittedly compelling sequences, with the latter certainly exemplified by an electrifying interlude wherein Dixon walks his policeman friend through exactly how said murder might’ve occurred. By the time the fairly anticlimactic finale rolls around, however, In A Lonely Place has cemented its place as a hit-and-miss endeavor that is, for the most part, more miss than hit – which is a shame, undoubtedly, given that the movie generally feels like it should be so much better.

**1/2 out of ****