The year before his Oscar winning performance in The African Queen, In a Lonely Place delivers one of Bogart's finest performances; dark and complex. Gloria Grahame is gorgeous and her performance equally stunning. She stands toe to toe with one of the greatest actors of Hollywood's Golden Age and never faulters. Text book Film Noir, In a Lonely place should not be missed by fans of the genre.

Brilliant dialogue, and the Criterion rework is worth the price of the film by itself; the story felt a bit contrived towards the end, but perhaps I felt that due to often seeing Bogie in films where the dialogue has been supreme. It's a good thing, this film. I wonder how it'd played with Bacall as the female lead.

Back and forth on this one. There were moments where I felt really engaged: Bogart’s performance here felt pretty raw and more authentic than I’ve seen from him in other movies–he was hitting similar notes in parts as his role in something like Sierra Madre, but his performance here was more felt, less rote (more modern, perhaps.) Point is, I believed him more. But there were bits in the movie that felt juuuust this side of an after-school special on domestic violence, and as with most of the “message” films I’ve seen from this time period (looking at you, Gentleman’s Agreement or Lost Weekend) it falls flat with modern eyes. Still, quite good and I was pleased to see my first Gloria Grahame movie.

Not sure why this film gets such good reviews. Seems to be a pretty standard noir with nothing to distinguish it from all the others made in the 40’s or 50’s. Visually it’s quite mediocre too. Nothing to write home about. 5/10