An angry, washed-up screenwriter, Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart).
A new neighbor, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame).
Adjacent garden court apartments.
A dead hat-check girl.
An alibi.
A love affair.
A loss of trust.
Welcome to the lush, shadowy world of In a Lonely Place, my favorite film noir, aside from those other two or three that I love best.
I found a blog that says everything I wish I’d said about Nicholas Ray’s romance gone bad, referencing Camus, Sartre, and all of the essential demons, including self-obsession, delusion, malaise, rage, repression and personal horror that I wish I could have written about half as well. But I didn’t; someone else did. If you want to read it, click here.
Or maybe you’ll see the movie -- I can’t urge you enough to put it on your watch list. And if you have seen it, then you already know that getting a massage is dangerous; it can lead to innuendo, gossip, tragedy and heartbreak. No good can come of it, but, by golly, you deserve a catharsis, and besides, you set up the shiatsu appointment weeks ago.
“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” — Dixon Steele to Laurel Gray, reading an excerpt from his screenplay that mirrors the shards of his own life.
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