Rating: 
Summary: Bogey's Best
Review: Here's late 1940's early 1950's Film Noir, a love gone wrong drama. Bogart's ugliness, the angles of his forehead, the lines about his mouth are fascinating. Bogart is both violent and tender by body language. A truly remarkable and revealing performance. Not that the dialogue doesn't matter. It's brilliant give and take, literary musings with tough guy and gal repertoire. Gloria Graham is no piker either. She is the beautiful actress, but there is no doubt she loves Dixon Steele the screenwriter and comes to fear him too. I can't imagine another actress of this period pulling off this love story. And we get Bogart in love, a tough, and maybe psychotic guy in love. His manliness is counterpoint to his unprotected psyche. Also homage should be paid to Nicholas Ray's direction. There is a dark LA at night, eyes in the headlights of a post-war Buick feel in his direction. The story is adapted from a potboiler novel, but the adaptation takes it to another level.
Rating:
Summary: BOGIE AT HIS BEST
Review: Humphrey Bogart gives his most daring and emotionally complex performance in Nicholas Ray's IN A LONELY PLACE. Bogie is Dickson Steele (great name, huh?), a Hollywood screenwriter who is prime suspect in a murder after he lures a cute hat check girl to his apartment to read a screenplay and she is found dead a short time later. Here's a prme example of classic, intelligent, artistic filmmaking by Hollywood's best. This absolutely gripping film has been restored and looks like new. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: A Rebel of Night
Review: Humphrey Bogart is within his familiar metier as a rebellious loner who lives by night in "In a Lonely Place." He finds his perfect match in director Nicholas Ray, whose finest films dealt with rebels by night, such as "They Live by Night" and the greatest movie ever on the subject of rebellious youth, James Dean at his most overpowering in "Rebel Without a Cause." This is some of Bogart's finest work, and the same applies to his leading lady, Gloria Grahame, whose marriage to director Ray was in its final stages when this movie was being made. Bogart is Dix Steele, who is immersed in physical violence, which is taking a toll on his career as a screenwriter, as evidenced by the fact that he attacked and injured the producer of one of the films on which he was working. He also physically attacked one of his girlfriends. Bogart won applause from the men who served under him in World War Two, including Frank Lovejoy, who is later put in the position of investigating his former commanding officer as a Beverly Hills policeman. Bogart lives in an apartment with a courtyard view. Across that courtyard is the apartment of Grahame. He is able to observe her actions when their windows are open, reminiscent of Burt Lancaster watching Susan Sarandon in "Atlantic City." When they strike up a romance Bogart feels an infusion of life that propels him to greater efforts as a screenwriter. Grahame, a struggling actress, helps out by typing pages he has finished in longhand. This is film noir, however, and not a "they lived happy ever after" scenario. Bogart is a passionate man and the violent side remains within him. He is being investigated as a possible killer of a hatcheck girl he has brought home from the restaurant-nightclub he frequents to provide him with background abut a novel he wishes to avoid reading, but is being asked to adapt to a screenplay. When she is found dead not long after leaving Bogart's apartment, suspicion abounds at the Beverly Hills Police Station, given his violent past. Old foxhole mate Lovejoy argues on Bogart's behalf that he is innocent. Eventually Bogart's romance with Grahame and his status as a murder suspect reach a simultaneous crescendo. There are two murder suspects, Bogart and the deceased woman's fiance. Grahame, while feeling great affection for Bogart, is well aware of his violent side, which even Bogart's agent believes will never terminate. He would like a marriage and children. Will she take the risk? It is fascinating to see how the two major plot points of this hard hitting, bruisingly realistic movie are resolved. The story resolutions are deftly handled with an ironic twist at the film's conclusion.
Rating:
Summary: I'm In Awe Of This Movie!
Review: I checked this out of my local library because I am a big fan of Frank Lovejoy's 1950's radio drama "Nightbeat." This film comepletely took me by surprise. Anyone that is a fan of Gloria Grahame (The Greatest Show On Earth) and Humphrey Bogart has just got to see this. Very suspenseful and thought provoking character study of two hollywood lovers dealing with murder suspicions and Bogie's bad temper. So well directed and written I can't even tell you. They sure don't make'em like they used to.
Rating:
Summary: I'm In Awe Of This Movie!
Review: I checked this out of my local library because I am a big fan of Frank Lovejoy's 1950's radio drama "Nightbeat." This film comepletely took me by surprise. Anyone that is a fan of Gloria Grahame (The Greatest Show On Earth) and Humphrey Bogart has just got to see this. Very suspenseful and thought provoking character study of two hollywood lovers dealing with murder suspicions and Bogie's bad temper. So well directed and written I can't even tell you. They sure don't make'em like they used to.
Rating:
Summary: Much More than just a Disturbing Murder Mystery
Review: IN A LONELY PLACE is a brilliant film from director Nicholas Ray. Humphrey Bogart with his usual cragged-faced presence dominates the screen once again. This time he is a man totally introverted and obsessed with some hidden lack of ability to express his own compassion and humanity. Bogart plays an elusive Hollywood screenwriter named Dixon Steele that becomes the focus of a police investigation of a murder in this atmospheric and unsettling film. What makes the film so unsettling is Bogart's performance. He is a very enigmatic, private and tired man who at times seems so detached from reality that it is frightening. Yet Bogart in this role still posses a virile and cynical coolness of style that is so appealing and it is one that only he can pull off with his screen charisma bringing this character to reality and believability. In the film Bogart lives in a complex of courtyard apartments. The police investigation interferes with a relationship that Bogart has with Gloria Grahame who lives in the same complex. Bogart comes to be intrigued (and visa versa) by her and truly falls in love with her. Yet it is the police investigation that continues to intensify Bogart's inner struggle as a human being with his need to love and be loved and escalates his volatile and violent outbursts which confuse and distance Grahame from him. IN A LONELY PLACE examines such human qualities and frailties of love, trust and loyalty. It explores and exposes the effects of our interpretations, perceptions and misconceptions and ultimately demonstrates that our own human flaws can lead to perpetual loneliness of the heart if left unchecked. IN A LONELY PLACE is an outstanding and important film.
Rating:
Summary: Film noir at its best and most suspensful, Bogart excells!
Review: In a Lonely Place is a rare treasure, a film unavailable to the public for many years, not widely seen even at the time of its release in 1950, Nicholas Ray directed Humphrey Bogart to what many have called his most unsettling performance. This is a must see!
Rating: 
Summary: Nicholas Ray never made a good film
Review: In the seventies Ray couldn't get work, so film buffs began to think that he was a rebel (unwarranted assumption number one; he could have just been a soak) and that his movies must therefore be too cool for the studio brass (unwarranted assumption number two; they may have just stunk) and if they were too cool for the studio brass they must therefore be great (unwarranted assumption number three; they're not). He also wore an eyepatch, and eyepatch directors are always cool, aren't they? Lang, Ford, Walsh, de Toth. This Ray guy? Nah. Make that unwarranted assumption number four. This one mainly offends by its dullness. Slow, mushy, unstructured, cursed by a pillowy and nonstop score by George Antheil, free of any menace or suspense or villainy. Bogart is accused of some crime or other and spends the rest of the movie futzing around his apartment. The neighbor girl, Gloria Grahame, falls for him but begins to question if he's really as innocent as he seems. That's all she does is question; she doesn't do much of anything about it. This is one heck of a talky film. As the cops - none of whom can boast even one personality trait among them - lackadaisically pursue their meandering investigation, Bogart and Grahame sit around and talk about not much of anything. The seconds tick by. The viewer listens to the tuneless score. The cleaning lady comes in and asks to vacuum. A washed up silent film star makes several unsuccessful bids for audience sympathy. (I wish he'd been the one who was murdered.) Bogart makes the dull cop act out the murder and Ray shines a little light into his face, I guess because he'd been impressed by Detour five years earlier. Time passes... The viewer realizes that since Bogart produced the thing himself he's not likely to be a bad guy anyway so what are we waiting around for? More time passes... "It's as much a part of him as the color of his eyes, or the shape of his head." That one jolts you awake: the shape of his head?!?! What's that supposed to mean? We go droningly onwards... The cop mentions the investigation has been going on for three weeks, and the snarky viewer says "So, it's filmed in real time then?" More of the lush score; sounds like the Jackie Gleason Orchestra. More dullness. Silent-film-actor-dude recites Shakespeare, though there's not much call for a silent film actor to have memorized Shakespeare, now is there. Drip... Drip... Drip... Like sands through an hourglass... The viewer reaches for the gin bottle with trembling hand. I dunno if this is the worst film in Ray's unimpressive oeuvre - after all he made a lot of bad films - but I do know that except for Sirocco it's the worst film in Bogart's. Actually, Sirocco got itself quoted in a Dylan song one time, so Lonely Place wins the Razzie by a nose. If you want to see the cast in movies that don't stink so bad you have to open all your windows to air out the place, then see Gloria Grahame in The Big Heat, Art Smith in Brute Force, Robert Warwick in Silver Lode. If you want a truly great and underrated example of late Bogart, check out his final picture The Harder They Fall.
Rating: 
Summary: In A Lonely Place
Review: Moody, atmospheric, and genuinely absorbing, for the most part, but the killer's (sudden) "airtight confession" at the end just didn't ring true in terms of what a little more plot ingenuity might have accomplished. If for nothing else, see this film for the wistful, darkly romantic score appropriately provided by George Antheil.
Rating:
Summary: Send a message to the studios
Review: My one star review is for the DVD not the movie. In fact, the problem is I like the movie and would want to buy it on DVD. But I think it's ridiculous for these Hollywood people, who are always preaching to us, to charge so much for a movie that is so old and also when there are no extras on the DVD. How about a little documentary on the stars, the directors, etc. Something. Either that or make the price twelve bucks instead of double that. Also, what is the quality of the sound and picture, have they cleaned that up? This is highway robbery from a bunch of people who are constantly berating us for complaining about taxes or whatever, while they're living in half a dozen houses around the world and driving around Los Angeles in a mobile home so they don't have to share restrooms with the rest of us peasants (Barbra Streisand), all the while telling us we're supporting terrorism by driving SUVs. But I digress, the bottom line is that while this may be a great movie, it is overpriced for its age (after all, any and all costs to make it, distribute it, advertise it, have long ago been recouped) and, without any extras, Hollywood should give back a little to the people who have supported them and charge a reasonable price.
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