SnoopyStyle Bowie is a young prisoner escaping from a prison farm with two bank robbers. They are taken in by the Mobleys for a price. Bowie hopes to prove his innocence but must join the others in a bank robbery. He falls for the Mobley daughter, Keechie. After the chaos of the crime, the young love try to start a doomed star-crossed life together.This is a noir of a pair of doomed young lovers. The two leads have an interesting sincerity. They have a youthful innocence but also a world-weariness. They don't come off as movie stars. They seem more real than that. The drama isn't allowed to push too far into melodrama. There is compelling violence and needed consequences. This has a solid noir for its time.

bkoganbing Nicholas Ray made his directorial debut in They Live By Night that's a little bit Romeo and Juliet and a little bit Bonnie and Clyde. Bonnie Parker will no way recognize Cathy O'Donnell as herself, but The Bard will no way miss seeing her as Juliet Capulet.As for Farley Granger he was always playing sensitive and misunderstood youths like this one back in his salad days. Ostensibly he starts as an innocent kid convicted for something he didn't do and is looking for money to get a good lawyer to clear himself.A pair of rough customers, Howard DaSilva and Jay C. Flippen break out of their prison farm in Mississippi and as Flippen puts it recognize talent when they see it and he's an investment. If Granger was innocent before he sure isn't now. But the funny thing is that the media concentrate on Granger's baby face good looks and dub him as the gang leader. While Granger heals up from injuries sustained in the escape he does it at Will Wright's farm and gas station where he meets Cathy O'Donnell and it's instant love. But this is passion that will burn hot and fast as this love is no way meant to last.Ray did remarkably well capturing the doomed nature of the relationship and the people. Even viewing it today by someone who never heard of Bonnie&Clyde or even has seen the classic film. There is such an aura of sadness permeating the entire film from start to finish that even though you know it will end bad, you are drawn to these people.They Live By Night is one of Farley Granger's signature roles and a great start for the career of Nicholas Ray.

chaos-rampant There is no 'movie' as wonderful and nuanced as the perception we bring to our own life, though a lot of the time this cornucopia of senses is an indifferent and presupposed given, ungratefully and unwondrously seen. So we seek diversion and spectacle, most of which really dulls by the same degree that we were already dulled to seek the escape. But there are movies, like moments in life, that awaken some of that wondrous sense, in which we are real people again, alert and fully in our presence.I'm not waxing here, it's what the movie is about. It is about people, bank robbers on the run, who want the escape. Like a mantra, the characters repeat that they want to be 'real people', a transcendent drive. For the older two, dulled by life, the pursuit translates to one as simple practicality, money, to the other as the desire for thrills and diversion, the making of headlines whereby 'real' is the better than ordinary. For the betraying woman, it means getting her husband out of prison so she can be alive again instead of merely biding time.But for the young couple, which is the fulcrum of the film, it comes to mean real in each other's eyes, realized by truth and commitment to love. Great. Oh we see that the boy's clinging to the notion that love should be expressed with things to buy and a good time is a false escape, and that newspapers and in the end the cop continue to circulate a false image(the boy as killer) all to solidify the floating world. But I was amazed here by just the sincere spark between the lovers.The crime spree is merely the diversion here, the newspaper wrap. What's so wonderful is the heartfelt ordinariness, given the Hollywood trappings. Neither of the two protagonists is a seductive movie star, they are green, raw and overly eager in a larger world, as are their characters. And I value a presence like this as much as the most submerged Method, for me it steals into and reveals that presupposed life before any affected stance.The film captures only certain aspects of noir, it is not shot in the style for one. The most revealing thing is that the girl is not 'in' the crime story, not an accomplice like Bonnie to Clyde but a haven, a conscience. But the main engine remains noirish: an inexplicable black hole in life, the killing of a man 7 years ago, which can't be made right and devours the light. The karmic upsurge of previous life, the (similarly arbitrary) killing of the father, the breakup of home by parents who ran away with lovers, which rises again in our couple.Overall, it's not so much a noir as one of the great melodramatic love movies of the time. The trail goes from here to Gun Crazy to Breathless, which brings a 'real' camera to stress the affected stance, to the marvelous Zen of the Breathless remake with Gere and Kaprisky.Noir Meter: 2/4

man_out_of_time To see this masterpiece for the first time last night on the big screen at the Film Forum. (Well, as big as the screens get at that theater.) And after the film concluded, the film programmer, Bruce Goldstein, delivered a wonderful surprise to the audience: Farley Granger was in the house! Mr. Granger (looking very handsome) stood up and recalled how wonderful it was to work with Nicholas Ray on his directorial debut. He noted that Ray had been working in theater with Elia Kazan and implied that may have accounted for how skillful he was in directing actors. He also observed that, based on a few of his later films, he thought Ray had eventually gone "a little crazy," but that he was in his creative prime for this film. Boy, was he!