by Jeff Stoodt
On Thursday February 28th, the Milton Public Library will screen one of Humphrey Bogart’s lesser-known but critically acclaimed movies as part of its “Movie Masculinity” series. In A Lonely Place, a 1950 film noir starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, is celebrated today as a classic. Bogart plays Dix, a down-on-his-luck screenwriter with a bad temper. Falsely accused of murder, he is comforted and then flourishes under the influence of an aspiring actress (Grahame).
By the time this movie was released, Bogart was a bona fide star, with films like The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), and The Treasure of Sierra Madre (1948) behind him. It was the dawn of a new decade, and the studio system was changing: his new film was produced by his independent company and directed by Nicolas Ray (who later would go on to direct Rebel Without a Cause).
Writer Louise Brooks felt that this film came closest to capturing Humphrey Bogart as he was in real life. She said it’s a film “whose title perfectly defined Humphrey’s own isolation among people…(it’s) a role that he could play with complexity because the film character’s, the screenwriter’s, pride in his art, his selfishness, his drunkenness, his lack of energy stabbed with lightning strokes of violence, were shared equally by the real Bogart.”
Voted one of the All-Time Great 100 Movies by Time Magazine in 2005 (“We love every minute of this sardonic portray of life on Hollywood’s fringes…”), In a Lonely Place earns a 97% on the film aggregator Rotten Tomatoes website. Critic Armond White (New York Press) called it “one of Hollywood’s finest examinations of masculinity…Bogart’s stardom idealizes the virility and resoluteness we must then distrust.”
The screening is scheduled to begin promptly at 6:30 with a trivia contest preceding it at 6:15 PM. Refreshments will be served and this program will be held in the Keys Community Room (lower level). It is sponsored by The Friends of the Milton Public Library, and for more information contact Jean Hlady, Adult Services Librarian, at (617) 698-5757.