Humphrey Bogart plays Dixon Steele, a screenwriter who, disillusioned with the stories Hollywood produces, can no longer create. His story, the film, is a critique and analysis of Hollywood and its stories. Steele is asked to write a script adaptation of a potboiler; in a bar he meets a woman who has read the novel, and rather than waste his time reading it, asks her to tell him the story. When she's murdered the next morning, Steele is suspected. His neighbor, played by Gloria Grahame, provides him with an alibi; they meet and fall in love. However, their romance isn't 'happy-ever-after.' For director Nicholas Ray, love doesn't occur in an idyllic place, separated from an alienating, distrustful world, but rather in a lonely place where violence and injustice are the norm and feeling and art are forgotten. Kathy Geritz