The first half was about whether Bogart was accused of murdering the waitress he took home to his house that night. Then we don't get an answer as to who committed the murder and the second half is this love interest between him and this other girl that doesn't go anywhere either. I'm confused.

Fantastic in The Big Sleep and uber cool in The Maltese Falcon, Humphrey Bogart pushed the envelope on his acting range with In A Lonely Place. Its easily his best performance out of a career of great performances.Bogart plays Dick Steele, a Hollywood screenwriter who is on the verge of being washed up, after not having had a box office success in years. He is still well respected though, producers still want to hire him and some very glamorous leading ladies are desperate to speak his lines. However his career is harmed by having a reputation of violence and disharmony.After crossing paths with a future young murder victim, he becomes suspected of being the man responsible. This dilemma threatens to ruin the relationship with the woman that loves him, played by Gloria Grahame. While she is initially supportive of him she too begins also to suspect him.Its a gripping tale with complex characterisations, with some of the best acting ever in this type of film. Its a timely film to be rediscovered with domestic violence being a current topic too.

Dixon Steele is a Hollywood screenwriter in career difficulty, going to a nightclub to see his longtime agent, who tries to help Steele's career by having a trashy novel adapted to the screen. Steele agrees, but in the process gets into two violent confrontations at the nightclub. Despite this, a hat check girl at the club who has read the novel, which Steele didn't want to read, agrees to visit Steele at his apartment to describe what was in this novel, despite the fact that she would break a date with her boyfriend as a result. She does so and Steele pays her, but after she has left, she is later murdered.New neighbor Laurel Gray and Steele are called to the police station and questioned, and upon their meeting, develop a romance. Trouble is, Steele has a long record of violent behavior, and Steele alternately acts kind and generously and then threatening towards Gray, making her question her relationship with him. Continuing such behavior makes everyone else, including the police, more and more fearful of Steele. Who is he and what has he done? Great performances from all cast members, great noir atmosphere, but ultimately this is not a pleasant story. The ending in fact is a blessing in disguise.

A Humphrey Bogart headlined suspense drama, directed by Nicholas Ray, his fourth feature, also co-starring Ray's then wife Gloria Grahame, IN A LONELY PLACE has enjoyed a steady augmentation of accolades through the years, Bogart's performance is praised as one of his finest, as Dixon Steele, a Hollywood screenwriter with a propensity for violence, who becomes a major suspect of the murder of Mildred Atkinson (Stewart), a hat-check girl whom he had brought home to read him the story of a book, which he has been required to adapt.A key witness is Dixon's new neighbour, Laurel Gray (Grahame), a young lady just gets out of an unfruitful relationship, who attests that Mildred left Dixon's place alone and unharmed. A mutual attraction burgeons rapidly between Laurel and Dixon, and Mel Lippman (Smith), Dixon's long-time agent, gladly finds Dixon is back on track in his works while nurtured by the new romance. But still, the murderer is at large, and Dixon's history of violence starts to take a heavy toll on Laurel, upset by Dixon's escalating outrageous behaviours to either strangers or those who are around him, Laurel begins to question his innocence and develops a deep fear for him, she decides to run away, but, will Dixon let her off the hook so easily and a more crucial question, who is the heartless killer?With the foreground of a plot about murder and the introduction of Laurel as an alluring pseudo- femme fatale, viewers might expect that the picture would be a taut whodunit or a scheming film- noir, however, the film actually dodges them both, Dixon has no motive to conduct the crime at the first place, although Captain Lochner (Reid) once hectors Laurel that the act might be executed by a psychopath, but it transpires that there is rationale behind the homicide in the end of the day. Instead, the remarkable thing Ray and his writers have done is to emphasis on the commoner but far more profound groundings, the two incongruous characteristics between man and woman, i.e. the latter is greatly threatened by man's inbred inclination towards physical violence whereas the former is forever frustrated and infuriated towards the latter's capricious paranoia (quite a dichotomous conclusion might not apply to today's climate of gender politics, but 65 years ago, it is as incisive as any filmmaker can get). So the unsolved murder case becomes a perfect hotbed for the ill-fated lovers to lash themselves into distrust, doubt, fear and anger, until the climax, a belated telephone ingeniously draws to a poignant close.The film is a small-scale production with a lucid narrative, but it is enormously engaging (both Bogart and Grahame are marvellous here), a telling proof that movies can be done in a very economic budget, as long as its story is brilliant enough. However, as the narrative goes on, audience is gradually predisposed to side with Laurel, since the method to externalise Dixon's innate defect is way too progressive, and it becomes rather tough to sympathise with Dixon although Bogart leavens him with astonishing pathos, how can you expect any sensible woman to indulge such a trigger-happy brute, eventually, we feel glad that the story ends that way, but that's not what we suppose to feel, in a perfect world, we should be sorry for both of them.