Nicholas Ray "centenary"

TCM is honoring director Nicholas Ray on the 100th anniversary of his birth with a retrospective. Every Tuesday night in October, TCM will be showing the films of Ray. In fact, Ray was born in August 1911, but since August is Summer Under the Stars on TCM, they had to delay the tribute. Among the films showing up on the first night of the salute, there are two that I would recommend, although it's been quite a few years since I've seen either of them.

At 10:00 PM is In a Lonely Place, in which Humphrey Bogart stars as a screenwriter with a violent temper who gets accused of murder. Gloria Grahame, a woman who lives in the same apartment complex, can provide an alibi, and this leads to her falling in love with Bogart. Until she learns of his violent temper, which leads her to wonder whether of not he's innocent after all....

In a Lonely Place is followed at 11:45 PM by They Live By Night, a movie I think I very briefly mentioned by title only back when Farley Granger died earlier this year. Granger stars as a man who got sent to prison for a relatively minor crime, which results in his becoming hardened by the fellow inmates he meets who really do deserve to be in prison. They more violent prisoners break out and help Granger to do so, but it's a price that's rather high for him to pay. They Live By Night is one that has a lot of people who were B-actors at the time and one that I remember as being quite good.

I have not actually seen Knock on Any Door, the movie that kicks off the night at 8:00 PM, before.