I am a complete sucker for a good ol' Hollywood love story. To me, the greatest love stories also happen to be the saddest. You know, two people love each other, but can't be with each other. Nicholas Rays' "In a Lonely Place," is one such movie - and it is also so much more than that. It all comes down to the Humphrey Bogart's character, Dixon. Dixon is a forty-something Hollywood playwright who has 20 years in the business under his belt, but whose box office failure a few years back left him salty and unable to write. In the opening scene we become well acquainted with his character: apathetic, cold, unsympathetic, down right aloof, uncaring, hot tempered, violent when mad and above all, isolated from others. When we meet him, however, we also learn that the people around him respect him and don't try to change who he is or tell him how to live his life otherwise, and that's because he is a man who, in all his hard-headedness, one can't help but admire. He is witty, honorable and passionate, he states who he is and is that person, he sticks to his guns under pressure and minds his own business.
Nevertheless, I couldn't help but feel sorry for him during his hot-tempered outbursts and I wanted so badly for something good to happen to him, because despite all of his horrendous qualities, he deserves love too. Just watching him work steadily on his new script was enough to showcase his genius, his capabilities, his inner passion yearning to be released. But Dixon is a man who can't be but isolated, whose loneliness defines him. And what makes In a Lonely Place the tragedy that it is, is that we are aware that it is not, and never will be, a matter of being able to change his flaws for the better. Rather, they
are not to be changed at all. Hence, when all is said and done at the end of the film the tragedy emerges not from the irrepairability of his relationship with Laurel, but the invincibility of his isolation.
In a Lonely Place certainly earns a place in my top 20s!
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