Tuesday 27 October 2009

In A Lonely Place

No, not the tear-swelling New Order song. This Humphrey Bogart vehicle (dir Nicholas Ray, 1950) features a nice diegetic performance by Hadda Brooks. In typical style of the era our hero / anti-hero the murder suspect screenwriter HB sits in a bar at a piano with gorgeous Gloria Graham while Hadda sings and plays 'I Hadn't Anyone Till You', lyrically relevant to this burgeoning and troublesome love affair. Apparently Bogie shouted down a movie mogul who tried to change the way she performed. Bless him.
Throughout the movie a recurrent theme in various arrangements and styles (by composer George Antheil) plays behind Bogie's action. That's Wagnerian leitmotif, that is.

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