The Best Old Movies On a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, September 2-8
In a Lonely Place (1950)
Directed by Nicholas Ray
Humphrey Bogart never topped the character he played in this bleak noir, an alcoholic, vindictive writer who may or may not have murdered a girl he takes home one night. Ray’s direction consistently pulls focus onto the savage glint in the actor’s bared teeth and flop sweat, but the director also hones in on Bogie’s hangdog sadness. A subsequent, non-starter romance with Gloria Grahame presents a modernistic study of a doomed relationship between hollowed husks of people. At its heart is a single line of dialogue that could summarize all of noir: “I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” Jake Cole (September 4, 6:30pm; September 7, 2pm at the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Gloria Grahame series)