We've been putting off this one for a while because it's portrayed as a brutally cynical and depressing noir, but it turned out to be a different kettle of fish. First of all, I question its noir credentials. Although somebody does get murdered, all the main characters survive the film, albeit sadder and wiser. If you don't have your expectations raised to ridiculous heights you will be very favorably impressed, but it's more of a melodrama. Humphrey Bogart plays Dix Steele, a formerly-great screenwriter who hasn't written a hit since before the war (where he saw action) and who has serious anger-management issues. The film begins with him being given a recent potboiler novel (
Althea Bruce) which some studio boss wants turned into a screenplay. He can't bring himself to read it, but the hat check girl at the bar/restaurant he meets his filmmaking cronies at has read it, so he asks her if she'll come home with him and tell him the story. After some hemming and hawing she cancels her date with her fiance Henry (about whom she is decidedly lukewarm) and agrees. As they go into his (very nice, very LA-ish Hacienda-style apartment) they bump into a glamorous blonde neighbor whom Dix doesn't recognize. He sees her again as he looks out of the window just prior to the hat check girl, mid-(excruciating)-recap yells out "HELP!" (imitating the cries of the novel's heroine, who is trying to win back her lifeguard lover). Eventually he grows tired of her (her constant malapropisms, such as calling the main character "Alathea" make him wince) and gives her (the exorbitant sum) of $20 and tells her to get a taxi home. The next scene is him being woken up (still dressed in a gown as we saw him last) at 5 the next morning by a cop (with the weird first name of "Brub") who, it turns out, had Dix as his CO in the war, and has very fond feelings for him. Dix thinks he's being brought in because the obnoxious director he punched out in the bar the night before (for failing to respect his alcoholic ex-actor buddy) is pressing charges, but it turns out the hatcheck girl was found strangled and dumped by the side of the road. The cops are suspicious because Dix is so cool about the whole affair, which does seem strange, but Dix maintains it's probably Henry. While he's there, they bring in the cool blonde neighbor (Gloria Grahame, then-wife of director Nicholas Ray (before they fell out disastrously, supposedly because he found her in bed with his 13 year old son from a former marriage, but who had to sign
a very creepy contract for this film), playing someone much smarter and cooler than her moll in
The Big Heat) Laurel Gray, who, in providing an alibi for Dix, remarks that she's been watching him because she likes his face. Thus a spark is ignited which will lead to a love affair that is characterized by a line Dix inserts into the screenplay he goes on to write over the rest of the film: "I was born when she kissed me, I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me". Laurel, initially cool to Dix, soon falls hard for him and practically waits on him hand and foot as he, in a throwback (that delights his older, worrywart agent, Mel Lippman) to his pre-war productivity, writes feverishly day and night trying to polish the turd of
Althea Bruce into a shiny film treatment. At first things are wonderful - Dix is happy and productive, she is happy to find somebody who respects her, as she has escaped the clutches of a controlling real-estate mogul - but the police still believe Dix is the murderer, and Brub's boss keeps pushing him to get Dix to slip up. In fact, one of the best scenes of the film is when Dix goes to dinner with Brub and his wife just before Laurel agrees to be his lover and has the married couple act out how he, Dix, a person who has "killed hundreds of people...in movies", thinks the murder played out. Bogart is in shadow with a spotlight on his face, a hungry expression fixed thereon, as he urges Brub to squeeze harder on his wife's windpipe.
This unnerves the wife considerably, although Brub is unconcerned. He says that Dix was always weird and hard to read, and that's because he's an artistic type, who nonetheless made a great CO that his men respected. But Brub tells his boss about this, and his boss tells Laurel when she's called back in, and finally, when the two couples are having a picnic on the beach, all of this comes out and Dix is outraged that his friend still suspects him. He storms off with Laurel running after him, drives insanely, eventually running into another car, and when the driver (who turns out to be a UCLA football star - deserves everything coming to him, if you ask me) confront him, he beats the kid unconscious and is about to smash his head with a rock when Laurel screams at him that he'll kill him. From this point on Laurel realizes that she can't live with this man, but he's besotted and thinks that his apology has patched things up. Things eventually come to a head when he proposes to her, she says yes, he leaves, passing Mel on the way, who is delighted and comes to Laurel to congratulate her and finds her crying. She tells him she has to leave, and he gives her a speech saying you have to accept the whole Dix - his violence is the source of his talent. They agree that the only way for her to leave without it sending him into a spiral is if he experiences the triumph of having his script accepted at the same time. As luck would have it, she's just finished typing it up and gives it to him to take to the director. She books a flight on a plane to New York to escape, yet he returns, saying that she should be the one to pick out the ring, and won't let her alone and drags her round all day so that she misses her flight. That evening they go out with their movie buddies and all hell breaks loose as Dix throws a fit about his screenplay being leaked (he thinks the director will hate it because it doesn't follow the book faithfully) and he punches Mel. Laurel runs home, intending to escape, but he follows her there. Finally he realizes that she intends to escape and his rage overtakes him, and... (to quote
Wikipedia):
The original ending had Dix strangling Laurel to death in the heat of
their argument. Sgt. Nicolai comes to tell Dix that he has been cleared
of Mildred's murder but arrests him for killing Laurel. Dix tells Brub
that he is finally finished with his screenplay; the final shot was to
be of a page in the typewriter which has the significant lines Dix said
to Laurel in the car (which he admitted to not knowing where to put) "I
was born when she kissed me, I died when she left me, I lived a few
weeks while she loved me". This scene was filmed halfway through the
shooting schedule, but Ray hated the ending he had helped write.
I actually like this ending. It makes it into a true Noir and fits the conventions nicely. What ACTUALLY happens is that Dix
almost strangles Laurel, but stops himself and then answers the phone and tells Laurel that Brub's boss wants to apologize to her. She takes it, and says that that information would have meant the world to them yesterday but now it doesn't matter anymore. Bogart leaves, and as she watches him go, she says the "I was born" line followed by "Goodbye Dix". The End. Now, while this is definitely more realistic, and more open-ended, I think that the film is actually rather stylized melodrama, so it fits for it to have the neat, noirish ending. As it is, it's not actually
that tragic. Laurel loving Dix has allowed him to produce a comeback screenplay, and she has also gained the confidence to go her own way. Granted both of them are broken people, but I don't see that they're
more broken than they were - they're just more aware of their flaws. Perhaps the problem is that the breakdown of their relationship is rushed. Dix finds out that Laurel has been taking sleeping pills "for a while" but we don't know exactly what caused it. Was it the suspicions planted in her head by the cops? Or was it just realizing that Dix is a little bit unhinged? But she was with Dix at his best - working hard, productive. Imagine if she'd had to be with the between-projects, disillusioned Dix.
Nonetheless, this is clearly a very good film, and Bogart and Grahame are wonderful. I think Bogart, like Cary Grant, is undervalued as an actor precisely because he makes it look so easy. And Grahame again almost steals the picture, just as she did with (the much inferior, despite being directed by Fritz Lang)
The Big Heat. While the cops aren't so great, the cinematography is also stellar, with some scenes (like the reenactment) truly standout. I could've done with a few more seeds of doubt to make us think that Dix might actually have killed the hat check girl (turns out it was indeed Henry, who tries to kill himself but hits lung instead of heart). And you can see why the French love this film so much - it seems very French in some ways beyond the noirish fatalism: Grahame sleeps naked, which contrasts with the ridiculous pajamas most film actors are seen in in films of this period, and also gets a regular nude massage from a giant butch masseuse called Martha, who also fills her ears with stories of Dix breaking the nose of his former girlfriend, and who may really want Laurel to run off with
her. Watch as a double bill with
Sunset Boulevard to get a truly jaundiced writer's-eye view of studio-era Hollywood.
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