In a Lonely Place

Grahame began one of her finest performances, in Nicholas Ray’s masterpiece of moral and psychological ambiguity, with one of her most memorable entrances. “I noticed him because he looked interesting,” she tells a police captain to explain why she had her eyes on cynical screenwriter Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart) the night he’s alleged to have committed a murder. “I like his face.” His character, she discovers over the course of the film, is cloudier and more sinister than she initially sensed, not to mention—possibly—murderous. One of the eeriest and most suspenseful products of noir’s golden age, In a Lonely Place is also a masterful takedown of Hollywood politics and a deeply affecting depiction of a romantic relationship too intense for either partner to bear.