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They
Live By Night
Directed by Nicholas Ray
1948 - United States - 95 min
Summary:
"This boy...and this girl...were
never properly introduced to the world we live in."
With this superimposed opening title, director Nicholas
Ray inaugurates his first feature, They Live by Night.
Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell play a "Bonnie
and Clyde"-type fugitive couple, who in trying
to escape their past are hell-bent down the road to Doom.
Despite their criminal activities, Bowie and Keechie are
hopelessly naive, fabricating their own idyllic dream world
as the authorities close in. The entrapment -- both actual
and symbolic -- of the young misfit couple can now be seen
as a precursor to the dilemma facing James Dean in Ray's
1955 film Rebel Without a Cause. This was the first
film version of Edward Anderson's Depression-era novel Thieves
Like Us (adapted again a quarter-century later by Robert
Altman). It is one of the most delicate and heartbreaking
noirs ever made.
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