The career of Nicolas Ray boasts many films that are part of the cinematic canon, but it was his 1950 Film Noir In a Lonely Place that cemented his directorial sensibility and his appreciation of the fragile human condition. Starring an ageing Humphrey Bogart, in one of his most complex roles, and Gloria Grahame, who perhaps even surpasses Bogey in a performance that has the wit of Bacall, the emotion of Bergman and the sexiness of Hayworth. Screened in front of a full house in Hastings' Electric Palace In a Lonely Place provokes many interesting questions around sexual politics, representation, the dark side of Hollywood and how we understand cinema through the problematic structure of genre.

For this episode, Dario interviews Professor Julie Grossman, director of Film Studies at Le Moyne College, upstate New York. Prof Grossman's book Rethinking the Femme Fatale contests the critical discourses that simplistically posit the female icon of Noir as an object of male fantasy and anxiety.

There's also an accompanying blog by audience member and film teacher Peter Blundell for you to check out, should an hour and forty minutes not be enough for you.

Show Notes

Prof. Julie Grossman, Le Moyne College, Syracuse, NY. 

Library of America entry on In a Lonely Place

Ed Gonzalez Review in Slant 

Serena Bramble in Senses of Cinema

Gaby Wood on In A Lonely Place for LRB

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