The Bogart Advantage

It’s a close call but this might be one of those rare instances where the movie outperforms the book. The flick does have an unfair advantage though with Bogart as the lead…


For a crash course on a category that can be hard to pin down, Nicholas Ray’s psychologically complex “In a Lonely Place” has it all, starting with a sneering Bogart.

Even trying to categorize “In a Lonely Place” is tricky: It has elements of murder mystery, melodrama and Hollywood insider scoop. Yet it is certainly one of the most forthright films to deal with domestic abuse ever to come from a major production company, let alone in the early 1950s. Here is a movie so rough-minded, so willing to be unsympathetic that it opens with its protagonist, a screenwriter named Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), threatening to get into a brawl with a stranger.

New York Times , April 30, 2020

THE BOGART SUSPENSE PICTURE WITH THE SURPRISE FINISH – (original tag line)

A classic California noir with a feminist twist, this prescient 1947 novel exposed misogyny in post-World War II American society, making it far ahead of its time. [Amazon Publisher description]

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