In a Lonely Place - Nicholas Ray (1950)

"Not unlike Albert Camus’s The Stranger, Nicholas Ray’s remarkable In a Lonely Place represents the purest of existentialist primers. Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), a washed-up Hollywood screenwriter under pressure to produce a good screenplay, has been given the simple task of writing a cut-and-dry adaptation of a novel when he meets a hatcheck girl named Mildred Atkinson (Martha Stewart), who he invites to his home in order to discuss the adaptation. An hour later Mildred is found dead on the side of a road and Dixon becomes prime suspect in her murder. Dixon’s history of abusing women seasons his material but it certainly doesn’t help his credibility factor. What unravels—or, rather, how Dixon begins to unravel—becomes a brilliant extrapolation of what Camus called 'philosophical suicide.' ..."
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Roger Ebert
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