Humphrey Bogart is Dixon Steele, an embittered and washed-up Hollywood screenwriter who pays hat-check girl Mildred Atkinson (Martha Stewart) to help out with a script read-through one night.
When she’s found dead the next morning, Steele comes under suspicion until his actor neighbour, Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), gives him an alibi.
Dix and Laurel fall in love but police suspicion sours the affair, as well as Dix’s violent temper which alarms Laurel.
She agrees to marry him, but after he attacks his agent Mel (Art Smith), she plans to leave him and he attacks her.
Even though the real murderer confesses they split up, their relationship destroyed by Dix’s violence.
The story of a woman slowly coming to suspect that her partner is a murderer harkens back to 1940s melodramas such as Suspicion (1941) and Gaslight (1944), but the way the relationship is depicted here is much more nuanced and adult – more frightening in its barely contained violence.
Film noir isn’t always as dark as it’s cracked up to be, but Nicholas Ray’s In a Lonely Place is one film where the desolation cuts to the bone.
Dixon ‘Dix’ Steele
Humphrey Bogart Laurel Gray
Gloria Grahame Brub Nicolai
Frank Lovejoy Captain Lochner
Carl Benton Reid Mel Lippman
Art Smith Sylvia Nicolai
Jeff Donnell Mildred Atkinson
Martha Stewart Charlie Waterman
Robert Warwick Lloyd Barnes
Morris Ankrum Ted Barton
William Ching Paul
Steven Geray Junior
Lewis Howard Frances Randolph
Alice Talton Effie
Ruth Warren Henry Kesler
Jack Reynolds Martha
Ruth Gillette Dr Richards
David Bond Swan
Guy Beach Mike
Mike Romanoff Joe
Arno Frey
Director
Nicholas Ray
Humphrey Bogart
Gloria Grahame
Frank Lovejoy
Carl Benton Reid
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