Mark Strand recommends In A Lonely Place directed by Nicholas Ray

My dear friend Mark Strand (former Poet Laureate of the United States, Pulitzer Prize winner, MacArthur "Genius Prize" recipient and too many other accolades to mention) recommends this dark and beautiful movie.

In a Lonely Place
Nicholas Ray
1950

It has been a long while since I saw In a Lonely Place, directed by Nicholas Ray and starring Humphrey Bogart and Gloria Grahame, but I do remember thinking that it was Bogart's best performance. He plays a paranoid screenwriter given to violent outbursts of appalling intensity. Grahame, meanwhile, brings a sexiness to her role as the estranged lover of a real estate developer that--so far as I know--has never been surpassed and, come to think of it, probably never has been equaled. Film noir at its gloomy best.

Mark Strand
Poet