In a Lonely Place by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, usually turns up high in the list of classic noirs.  This probably has more to do with its adoption by the French New Wave than it does with true noir credentials, and the fact that it is one of Hollywood’s periodic flashes of its own underbelly. 

But Bogart is slick, wise-ass and selfish and so is the movie, which has for a hero a bitter and depressed cynic, one incapable of heroism.  It's a comment on the 1950s, when screenwriters were accused of communism and their friends often turned against them, and Humphrey Bogart plays it dark, often amoral, insisting that a girl find her own cab, refusing to show empathy for a murdered woman, remorseless when shown photos of a crime scene and sexually aroused when given the chance to re-enact a violent murder.

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For director Nicholas Ray then surely, In a Lonely Place is a confessional film about self-loathing in Hollywood.  Nicholas Ray made a whole lot of interesting films, notably Rebel Without a Cause (1955) as well as the noir They Live by Night (1948).  What strikes you most of all about Ray’s films, other than expressionistic lighting used to good effect in his noirs such as On Dangerous Ground, Born to Be Bad and A Woman's Secret — is his empathy with social misfits, and when combined with a glimpse of Hollywood, it’s all of this, not the story that gives In a Lonely Place its edge.  Jean-Luc Godard was a great admirer of Ray and famously said in his review of Bitter Victory:  "There was theatre (Griffith), poetry (Murnau), painting (Rossellini), dance (Eisenstein), music (Renoir). Henceforth there is cinema. And the cinema is Nicholas Ray."

This kind of film, with a did s/he or didn’t s/he murder story, has remained popular, but later efforts such as Jagged Edge (1985) make a much better job of weaving mystery and doubt concerning the crime.  As noted, Bogart doesn’t seem to care in the slightest about the rap, and in fact barely even protests his innocence.  Then there’s the fact that there are no other suspects, or at least the one suspect there is — the victim’s boyfriend — is never seen. Instead of this the script relies on the fact that Bogart’s writer character Dix is reported to be violent, and a general bad seed.  This is fair enough, and there is a convincing road rage scene in which he takes a handy rock to another motorist’s head.  

Try some of these for hard-boiled wise-cracking fun:

Dixon Steele: Go ahead and get some sleep and we'll have dinner together tonight.
Laurel Gray: We'll have dinner tonight. But not together.

Or one of my favourites: ‘It was his story against mine, but of course, I told my story better.‘

Then of course there is just the tough stuff:

Dixon Steele: [to man hosing down the sidewalk in front of the florist shop] Say, do me a favor, will you, pal?
Flower Shop Employee: Yes, sir.
Dixon Steele: I want to send two dozen white roses to a girl.
Flower Shop Employee: Yes, sir. Do you want to write a card?
Dixon Steele: No, there's no card. Her name's Mildred Atkinson.
Flower Shop Employee: Mildred Atkinson. Yes, sir. What's her address?
Dixon Steele: I don't know. Look it up in the papers. She was murdered last night.
Flower Shop Employee: Yes, sir.

The trailer for In a Lonely Place is pretty exciting stuff; you would definitely want to check it out after seeing this triumphant two minutes of shock, desperation and titillation, which promises among other things 'SUSPICION 'ROUND THE CLOCK!'  The trailer also features a lingering look at singer Hadda Brooks, who performs the movie's obligatory musical number.