Beyond its surface plot of confused identity and tormented love, the story is a mordant comment on Hollywood mores and the pitfalls of celebrity and near-celebrity, similar to two other American films released that same year, Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard and Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve.

[9] In 2007, In a Lonely Place was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.

While driving to meet his agent, Mel Lippman, Dix's explosive temper is revealed when, at a stoplight, he engages with another motorist in a confrontation that almost becomes violent.

The hat-check girl, Mildred Atkinson, is engrossed in reading the copy meant for Dix; since she only has a few pages left to go, she asks to be allowed to finish it.

Nicolai takes him downtown to be questioned by his superior, Captain Lochner, who reveals that Mildred was murdered and informs Dix that he is a suspect.

Captain Lochner meets with Laurel again and sows seeds of doubt in her mind, as he has fixated on Dix's record of violent behavior.

At a beach party with the Nicolais, Sylvia inadvertently reveals Laurel's follow-up meeting with Lochner; Dix furiously storms off.

Dix goes to the police station and attempts to clear his name, inadvertently meeting Mildred's boyfriend Henry Kesler, who works at a bank.

Dix then intercepts a telephone call meant for Laurel at the table, angrily discovering it is Martha and slugging Mel when he tries to intervene.

When Edmund H. North adapted the story, he stuck close to the original source and John Derek was considered for the role of Steele because in the novel the character was much younger.

[12] Andrew Solt developed the screenplay with regular input from producer Robert Lord and director Nicholas Ray, and the result is far different from the source novel.

Louise Brooks wrote in her essay "Humphrey and Bogey" that she felt it was the role of Dixon Steele in this movie that came closest to the real Bogart she knew.

Before inertia set in, he played one fascinatingly complex character, craftily directed by Nicholas Ray, in a film whose title perfectly defined Humphrey's own isolation among people.

In a Lonely Place gave him a role that he could play with complexity because the character'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.

In the original ending we had ribbons so it was all tied up into a very neat package, with Lovejoy coming in and arresting him as he was writing the last lines, having killed Gloria.

Grahame was forced to sign a contract stipulating that "my husband [Ray] shall be entitled to direct, control, advise, instruct and even command my actions during the hours from 9 AM to 6 PM, every day except Sunday ...

At the time of its original release, the reviews were generally positive (in particular many critics praised Bogart and Grahame's performances), but many questioned the marketability given the bleak ending.

He favors the underdog; in one instance he virtually has a veteran, brandy-soaking character actor (out of work) on his very limited payroll ... Director Nicholas Ray maintains nice suspense.

Humphrey Bogart is in top form in his latest independently made production, In a Lonely Place, and the picture itself is a superior cut of melodrama.

Playing a violent, quick-tempered Hollywood movie writer suspected of murder, Mr. Bogart looms large on the screen of the Paramount Theatre and he moves flawlessly through a script which is almost as flinty as the actor himself.

[18] Not unlike Ray's debut They Live by Night (1948), it was advertised as a straight thriller although the film does not fit easily into one genre, as the marketing shows.

Critic Ed Gonzalez wrote in 2001, "Not unlike Albert Camus' The Stranger, Nicholas Ray's remarkable In a Lonely Place represents the purest of existentialist primers ... Gray and Dixon may love each other but it's evident that they're both entirely too victimized by their own selves to sustain this kind of happiness.

"[20] Curtis Hanson is featured on the retrospective documentary of the DVD release showing his admiration for the film, notably Ray's direction, the dark depiction of Hollywood and Bogart's performance.

The website's critics consensus reads: "Led by extraordinary performances from Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, In a Lonely Place is a gripping noir of uncommon depth and maturity.

[24] In Season 2, Episode 1 of the TV show Frasier (1994), an author reads from his book lines echoing the film's: "I budded when you kissed me.

The strongest difference between the two works lies in the protagonist; the film's Dixon Steele is a screenwriter with an unconventional life and a decent person with fatally poor impulse control, prone to wild overreaction when enraged.

While still receiving what he perceives as a small monthly allowance from his uncle, Steele murders a wealthy young man and assumes his identity, in a manner similar to Patricia Highsmith's later Tom Ripley.

Penguin Books published a paperback edition in the UK in 2010 as part of their Modern Classics imprint, and the Library of America included it in the first volume of their "Women Crime Writers" collection.