The jaded and cynical flipside to the lovingly ecstatic portrait of Hollywood mythmaking offered by Singin’ in the Rain, Nicholas Ray’s is a bleak yet sensual film noir that refuses to indulge in any cliched genre trappings.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 22, 2024

In a Lonely Place finds Nicholas Ray still the relative newcomer to the Hollywood studio scene, yet he is already displaying subversive evidence of instilling in his work representative preoccupations.

| Nov 15, 2023

This is film noir without guns and gangsters, with no robberies or blackmail schemes, where the only crime on screen is a couple of alcohol-fueled assault... and yet it is among the most devastating noir dramas you’ll ever see.

| Apr 14, 2023

A brute ruby... As in the finest exemplars of film noir, the screenplay is a fated funhouse of crisscrossing intentions:not only does Ray burrow into the subtext with his own romantic struggles, he describes how to make movies like the one we’re watching.

| Original Score: 10/10 | Oct 30, 2022

There is lyricism in this melodrama but it comes strictly in a pessimistic film-noir style: the movie's faith in the power of love is remarkably limited.

| Aug 29, 2022

A case of artistic introversion of a highly unstimulating order.

| Aug 16, 2022

A beautiful yet devastating piece of cinema that operates as a bleak film noir, a compelling murder-mystery, a scathing critique of Hollywood, and a character study of penetrating depth.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 13, 2020

What matters isn't whether or not he's innocent, but that he could have committed the crime just the same.

| Original Score: 9/10 | Aug 23, 2020

Bogart, always brilliant at playing bitter, adds a frightening aspect of fury to Dix, casting his impulses as well beyond his control -- he manages to make cutting a grapefruit seem like an act of vengeance.

| Original Score: 7.5/10 | Aug 11, 2020

One of the most acidic looks at Hollywood - and one of the best.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 14, 2020

Bogey has got himself a pretty good picture here, the best he has had of the last several.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jun 19, 2020

Bogart gives one of the best performances of his career, elevating the odious Dix into a figure of great intellectual depth.

| Apr 28, 2020

In a Lonely Place isn't so much a straightforward thriller as it is a poignant psychological study of a person and a milieu, veiled as an atmospheric noir.

| Feb 25, 2020

In a Lonely Place (1950) is maverick director Nicholas Ray's and Columbia Pictures' well-respected, bleak, mature, and dramatic film noir, although it was not a box-office hit and received no Academy Award nominations.

| Original Score: A+ | Sep 29, 2019

You get a full performance from Gloria Grahame, then bonus ones from each of her eyebrows.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 29, 2018

It's not just the end, but the film's whole last half hour that wrecks you.

| Nov 29, 2018

A volatile Bogart drops the charm to deliver perhaps his finest performance.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 24, 2017

Humphrey Bogart's world-weariness and romanticism take on something brutal and misogynist in this 1950 noir masterpiece directed by Nicholas Ray - and it's a marvellous performance by Gloria Grahame.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 22, 2017

It's a deeply Freudian film that happens to understand Freud--testament to its enduring, unshakable nature.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jul 11, 2016

achieves an absolutely unrelenting grip because Ray plays so expertly on our associations, turning them inside out and against us

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jun 8, 2016