5 Feet of Fury

In a Lonely Place (1950): “Film noir as an opera of male fury”

Carrie Rickey writes:

While hiring Grahame did the opposite of shoring up the collapsing Ray union, their marriage was mined for considerable effect in Ray’s contributions to the screenplay. “It wasn’t hard for the director,” wrote Ray biographer Patrick McGilligan, “. . . to view the tortured writer Dix as a crazy-mirror version of himself.” With Grahame in the front of the camera and Ray behind, how could the director resist projecting his own failing marriage onto the psychodrama and mutual paranoia of the lead characters?