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By
NICK ZEGARAC
Nicholas Ray's "In A Lonely
Place" is one of those eternally compelling film
noirs that haunts you once you've seen it. Bogart
is screenwriter, Dixon Steele. He's got a terrible
temper that doesn't make him popular either
amongst the studio big shots or his nightclubbing
buddies. But has that uncontrollable rage led him
to kill? Det. Sgt. Brub Nicolai (Frank Lovejoy)
and Capt. Lochner (Carl Benton Reid) seem to think
so. Dix' is their prime suspect in the homicide of
a cocktail waitress. Of course it doesn't help
that she was a guest at Steele's home the very
night that she disappeared. Apart from its initial
focus on murder, the bulk of this film is a moody
melodrama buttressed by an impossible romance.
As is his trademark, Bogie plays Dix' as the
brooding outsider but with an undercarriage of
wicked cynicism that, at times, can be quite
unsettling. Gloria Grahame costars as Bogie's
sultry neighbor, Laurel Gray. At first believing
Dix's innocence she embarks upon an ill-fated
relationship, against both her better judgment and
the advice of her meddling masseur, Martha (Ruth
Gillette).
Director Nicholas Ray keeps the tension taut yet
supple, manipulating his audience with the
proverbial "did he or didn't he" question looming
in the back of our minds until the final fade-out.
But the film suffers somewhat from an inconsistent
commitment to its many plot threads, which never
add up to a satisfactory conclusion in the end.
Instead we are given a series of vignettes -- some
feeling as though they belong to another movie --
and then a truncated conclusion that appears
tacked on after three or four viewings.
I'm not sure what the term "complete digital
restoration" means over at Columbia Studios. When
I think in those terms flashes of Paramount's "
Sunset Boulevard" or Warner's "Mildred Pierce"
immediately come to mind. But when Columbia uses
it, as they do in their "restoration snippet
trailer" included on this disc, they merely mean
that they've digitally repaired some of the
glaring rips and tears in the original negative.
That's not complete and it's not even close to
what a film like "In A Lonely Place" needs.
Throughout this often low-contrasted B&W image
there is an excessive amount of film grain, dirt,
scratches and, on occasion, aliasing and
shimmering of fine details. Night scenes are worse
off than day scenes, showing signs of rear
projection photography that are extremely grainy
and sometimes even out of focus. Indoor and day
scenes on the whole fare better. But hey, this is
film noir and often grit and grain go hand in
glove. The audio is nicely balanced but again,
needs more clean up to bring it up to acceptable
levels for DVD release.
As far as extras, we get a feeble "making of"
featurette and a really lousy "The Bogart
Collection" montage that shows us stills from all
the films Bogie made at Columbia, but not a single
film clip, presumably because the footage is just
so bad in terms of its deterioration of the
original camera negative and film stock. It's such
a shame that the regime at Columbia that was
responsible for earlier efforts in the B&W
classics department have either been fired or
departed for greener pastures as their exemplary
efforts are nowhere to be found on the studio's
recent batch of lack luster transfers, of which
"In A Lonely Place" is but one! |
