In a Lonely Place: Bogart's Most Frightening Role

Fri, 04 Apr 2025 10:00:00 +0000

Humphrey Bogart plays a Hollywood screenwriter named Dixon Steele in In a Lonely Place, and for the first twenty minutes you think you know the film. Washed-up talent, wisecracks sharper than the room deserves, a cynicism worn like a good coat. Then a young woman is murdered after leaving his apartment, Dix becomes the prime suspect, and the film begins to do something almost no noir of 1950 dared. It stops asking whether he did it and starts asking whether you would want to be in a room with him regardless. By the end, that second question is the only one that matters, and it is far more disturbing than any answer to the first.

Gloria Grahame - vo.rs

In a Lonely Place: Bogart's Most Frightening Role