In a Lonely Place - DVD review

The film of In a Lonely Place (1950), directed by Nicholas Ray, is rather better known than Dorothy B. Hughes' novel (1947) from which it was adapted. Both are quite excellent, but very different. I read the book first, and now I've caught up with the DVD of the movie, which stars Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame. Bogart plays Dix Steele, a Hollywood screenwriter whose career is in decline.

In the novel, Dix is a war veteran who hankers after becoming a writer, but doesn't achieve his dream. He becomes obsessed with picking up women and murdering them, and the book charts his mental decline. In the film, a young woman in whom Dix has shown an interest is murdered, but it's not clear until the end whether or not he is guilty of the crime.

Even though I knew in advance that the film script bears only a limited resemblance to the source material, I was still surprised that Andrew P. Solt, the writer, jettisoned so much of Hughes' book. Given the excellence of the novel, this was a high-risk gamble, but in fairness to Solt, he does create a mood of menace, and the actors do a superb job. I'm slightly surprised that nobody has attempted to re-make the film in a manner more faithful to the book; perhaps the success of Ray's version remains a deterrent.

In the bonus extras, the comment is made that in the movie, Dix is a man whom women watch, whereas in the book, he's a man who watches women. This distinction between the approach of the male and female writers struck me when I was watching; there's something very modern about Hughes' writing, and the same can't quite be said about Solt's script, despite its considerable merits. But I enjoyed watching the film almost as much as I enjoyed reading the novel. Not least because of the soundtrack by George Antheil, known to locked room mystery fans as Stacey Bishop, author of Death in the Dark.

Sudden Fear - 1952 film review

Sudden Fear is a well-regarded film noir that has passed me by until I came across it on Talking Pictures. It's based on a novel of the same name by Edna Sherry, who only wrote a handful of books, and it stars Joan Crawford, Jack Palance, and Gloria Grahame (she of Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool). Essentially, it's a film of two halves.

The first part of the story seemed very ordinary to me. Crawford plays Myra Hudson, a highly successful playwright - although the fragments of her dialogue that we hear are pretty dire. Myra also happens to be an heiress. She comes across Lester, a charismatic actor, younger than herself, played by Jack Palance. She falls for him, and soon they are married. But we can guess what fate has in store for a very rich woman who becomes besotted over a young man, can't we? When Irene (Gloria Grahame) turns up in their lives, and it emerges that she's an old flame of Lester's, the writing is obviously on the wall.

The story takes a fresh turn when Myra finds out that Lester and Irene are plotting against her. This development occurs as a result of astonishing stupidity on Lester's part, a weakness in the plotting. At this stage, I wasn't impressed, since every twist of the storyline had been supremely predictable. But from then on, the suspense builds nicely, as Myra determines to fight back. Soon it becomes clear that Lester and Irene have at least as much to fear from her as she does from them. But the outcome is anyone's guess.

I enjoyed the second half of the film and I could see why Crawford earned an Oscar nomination for her performance. She and Palance have never been favourite actors of mine, if I'm honest, but they do a good job here. An added bonus is the setting - the main events take place in San Francisco, and that wonderful city is nicely portrayed. Elmer Bernstein's score is in the Bernard Herrmann vein, and adds suitably to the tension. I'm now interested in tracking down Sherry's novel.