Marriage: In a Lonely Place
2012; Volume: 87; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2562-2528
Autores Tópico(s)Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism
ResumoNicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950) is a critical favorite. (1) It stars Bogart, what one critic has observed is his last, great movie, (2) and Gloria Grahame, who at the time was, unbeknownst to others associated with the movie, separating from Ray with whom she was then married. (3) This highly romantic movie tells of how two people meet, fall passionately love but come to distrust one another so by the final shot each is again alone. Bogart, who plays the screenwriter Dixon (Dix) Steele, writes the epitaph for the movie the oft-quoted dialogue he creates for the screenplay at the center of the movie: was born when she kissed I died when she left I lived a few weeks while she loved me. Saying good-bye to Dix, Grahame, who plays the unsuccessful actress Laurel Grey, speaks to herself the movie's last line, lived a few weeks while you loved me. While classified by some as film noir, (4) the movie is more readily understood as a melodrama, more akin to Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow (1956) than to Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944). At its heart is a disbelief the sufficiency of romantic love to prevail the face of social, marital conventions. Those post-World War II conventions required the couplings of men and women be founded not on love but on a commercial exchange seemingly benefiting both and resulting marriages of comfort and convenience rather than genuine satisfactions and a transcendence of one's lonely state. Mid-way through the movie Dix and Laurel are wholly love with one another, and Dix, particular, is at peace with his Hollywood career, writing non-stop throughout the night a script based on--but which does not adhere to--the plot of a popular, trashy novel. It is at moment Dix's thespian friend, Charlie Waterman (Robert Warwick), a washed up actor from the silent era, quotes from Shakespeare's Sonnet 29. (5) That sonnet tells of a man, likely an artist, who is in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes. In respect he is like Dix, who has not had a commercial success, because he refuses to work on something he does not like and thereby become a popcorn salesman. A social failure, Shakespeare's artist is all alone, and respect, too, is similar to Dix, who lives alone and is known to let his phone ring unanswered. Shakespeare offers, however, his artist the redemption of great love: Happily I think on thee, and then my state, like to the lark at of arising ... For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings. That then scorn to change my state with Ray makes explicit the connection to Dix and Laurel when, as Dix falls asleep at break of day following his night of non-stop writing, Laurel repeats the Shakespearean line that then I scorn to change my state with kings. Ray also makes explicit, however, the transcendent state of such Shakespearean love is not possible his contemporary world. Ray identifies Dix's lonely state the opening shot. As the credits roll, we see a car mirror a pair of disembodied eyes floating against a backscreen shot of the street down which the driver makes his way. The name Humphrey Bogart momentarily appears over those eyes, identifying the actor with his character, Dix Steele. The driver stops at a red light, pulling next to another car whose occupants are an attractive, young woman and a portly, older man. The woman banters with Dix, asking whether he remembers her, since he wrote her last picture at Columbia. Oh, I make it a point to never see the pictures I write, he replies, highlighting his distaste for his screen-writing career. That casual exchange, however, provokes a jealous rage the man, who insists Dix stop bothering his wife. You shouldn't have done it, honey, no matter how much money pig's got, Dix replies, and then notches up still further the husband's threat they pull over to the curb by replying, What's the matter with right here? …
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