”I lived a few weeks while you loved me.”

Marvellous film. One of the best I've seen in a long time. Watched this on my birthday as I wanted to see a bonafide Noir-classic and this did not disappoint one bit. This is Bogie at his meanest. One of the best actors to portray vulnerable men that life has beat down on some level. Here he gives yet again a stellar performance as Dixon Steele, an ambiguous and cynical screenwriter who has seen better days. Gloria Grahame is perfect as Laurel, a woman who is desperate to fix a man, whose soul and nature she simply cannot change. This is a film noir, so their relationship is doomed from the start and to my surprise the plot of the film is also told by the character of Mildred at the start of the film, but such is the skill that the director Nicolas Ray, his film crew and writers Andrew Solt and Edmund H. North that the film keeps you at its grasp for the whole duration. It's just phenomenal work right from the start until the end.

Thematically there is a lot going on and it just the just the stuff that I am most interested about in general not just when it comes to films. The film about Hollywood yes, but to me it's mostly about the duality of a man. Steele is a fascinating character, wounded, angry, cynical, obsessive, tempered but also very loving and also capable of tenderness. He is the prisoner of his own failures, self-loathing, and nature. The film is not so much about whether Steele could have done the murder in a conventional sense, but rather is his nature and soul such that they would be capable of committing a murder like that. Laurel is equally interesting in her desperation to save and fix a man that is beyond repair. She tries her best and goes to great lengths to love a man but ultimately their love is not enough. Ray brilliantly mixes great Hollywood criticism into the film and in into the scenes. Great dialogue and shots. Bogie has the best scene, where Steele is describing his view on how the murder could have gone and how he would imagine it. Bogie is tense, scary and passionate in the scene, it further illustrates that Steele has a mind that could be capable of doing something like that. Ray also comes to the conclusion in the film that sometimes brilliant minds go to dark places and need that darkness in order to work and conjure up the material that they do. I agree and that is what is so interesting about the film. As I grow older, I understand that there is an inherent duality in us that makes us humans but also that animality and darkness that is also lurking behind the brilliance. The ending of the film is just pitch perfect. This is truly one of the most shattering film noirs and love stories ever made.