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Nicholas Ray’s dark, brooding masterpiece, “In A Lonely Place,” might not feature all the staples of the genre, but it remains film noir through and through, with a jet-black, poetic script, with lines like: “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.”
Bogart is at his most acerbic and callous as the washed-up screenwriter Dixon Steele, who is accused of murdering a young coat check girl, and his natural callousness and morbid sense of humor make him a prime suspect for the police. The most memorable moment comes when Steele demonstrates his intense creative process to just about the most unfortunate audience possible: His detective friend Brub (Frank Lovejoy).
As they discuss the case, Dix explains how he would have written the murder scene and gets Brub and his wife to re-enact the murder. He leans forward and gets noticeably animated about the idea, even egging Brub on to throttle his wife.
It’s a disturbing sequence that casts his character in a much more sinister light and lends credence to the idea that he is capable of murder. Bogart judges it just right, leaving it ambiguous as to whether this intensity is due to his passion for screenwriting or the fact that he is in fact a murderer.
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