A response (work in progress) to In a Lonely Place (1950) ~ Bogart and Grahame
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2017 (19 to 26 October)
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15 January
On first viewing Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame in In a Lonely Place (1950) (work in progress), as screened at Saffron Screen, on Monday 15 January 2018 at 8.00 p.m. (in the restored form from 1977)
Call it 'a noir masterpiece directed by Nicholas Ray' as @PeterBradshaw1 may, but In a Lonely Place (1950) had potential that, from the erratic driving of Dix Steele (Humphrey Bogart) onwards, is frittered away in too many directions - as driving away at absurd speeds embodies ? pic.twitter.com/JjnbEMax66— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 15, 2018
Multiply, despite a police Captain who [says that he] has a microphone that is set up to record interviews, the film treats contamination of evidence (or even whether the matter is relevant) as if it is no part of its remit, or within its purview. Whereas it is sufficiently clear that even an innocent person, suspected of a crime (let alone one with a sizeable dossier at police HQ), will not, for the moment, want to act in a way that openly calls into question the independence of someone who claims to be a witness. (No more so than the police themselves will want there to be such an opportunity for embellishment of the evidence and / or for another witness 'to be found' ?)
If Peter Bradshaw (@PeterBradshaw1) is right that it falls to consider In a Lonely Place in the category of noir, then maybe such a flavour of the inauthentic that pervades everything is apt – or, contrariwise, maybe it is a reaction to a film that seems to aim at being plausible, but where so much remarkably does not succeed in giving that impression, that, as its saving grace, we invoke the concept of film noir ?
Though botched by RKO's first cutting Hitchcock's principal photography to 55 minutes (in which, since preview audiences couldn't cope with it, no vestige survived of Bristol's very own @carycomeshome as murderer), Grant and Fontaine manage uncertainty as Grahame / Bogart don't.— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 15, 2018
Of course, that's Suspicion (1941), which thus ends up being a pair with Spellbound (1945), #UCFF argues : Lina McLaidlaw's (Joan Fontaine's) trust evaporates, whereas Dr. Constance* Petersen (Ingrid Bergman) robustly invests John Ballantyne (Gregory Peck)...— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) January 15, 2018
* Clue in her name. https://t.co/qU05P4CL6E
Attribute to Grahame’s character Laurel that she has seen it all before (with Mr Baker)*, or that Humphrey Bogart is a case, before the diagnosis existed (or before Taxi Driver (1976)), of post-traumatic stress disorder, but :
* Roger O. Thornhill (Cary again, with Hitchcock in North by NorthWest (1959)) is far more alarmed, though wildly drunk, by having been set behind the wheel of a car than Grahame as passenger – we see the vehicle objectively career, and also from the driver / passenger point of view - on one heck of a ride (we should either not have been shown that at all, or, if we are not intended to withdraw our belief, Grahame has not to react as if this is quite usual driving)
* As Adam Feinstein made a very case for, at Cambridge Film Festival 2016, Michael Curtiz did some unjustly neglected work with The Breaking Point (1950), and not just in Casablanca (1942) (with this film’s male lead and Bergman) :
Casablanca reviewed: 'a lively film, bulging with acting talent' - archive, 15 January 1943 https://t.co/IzdslO8Ynt— Guardian Film (@guardianfilm) January 15, 2018
* This film just shows why Paddy Considine’s Tyrannosaur (2011) was really so conventional (it felt as if, without acknowledging it, it was importing Peter Mullan from Ken Loach / Paul Laverty’s My Name is Joe (1998) ?)
All of which is calling out for some other film-references (assembling here, in alphabetical order) :
* The Artist (2011)
* Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017)
* Mulholland Drive [Dr.] (2001)
* […]
End-notes :
* But Laurel doesn’t seem to have the signs of having seen it all before even of Audrey Hepburn, as Holly Golightly, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) (even though, obviously, the oral sex in the gents is mightily toned down from what Truman Capote wrote – fancifully, although collected with three other stories in a slim volume, IMDb calls it ‘a novel’…)
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
