I was trying (without success) to track down the context of Jean-Luc Godard's notorious claim "Nicholas Ray is cinema" (it is not in Godard's "What is cinema?"). It's not that I think that Ray was a hack—at least during the first decade of his career as a director. Although he was credited with some insipid soap operas such as A Woman's Secret (1949) and "Born to Be Bad" (1950), he also helmsed more interesting movies, most famously "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955), which seems to me distinguished more by its iconographic performances than any visual panache. The ultra-campy western "Johnny Guitar" (1954) had more visual panache, but was carried by way-over-the-top performances by Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge.

The first movie that Ray directed, "They Live by Night" (1948, based on the 1937 crime-spree novel Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson that was filmed a quarter of a century later by Robert Altman under the original title) has many striking visual compositions, including aerial shots of get-away cars, Farley Granger shot like Marlene Dietrich through latticework, close-ups of Granger (also very "von" Sternberg, though it was only later that Ray took over Macao from Sternberg). The movie is widely classified as cinema noir, though it seems to me that rather a lot of the scenes are daytime ones (and none of the movie is set in cities). It is not, however, just the title that influenced the classification. There are menacing noirish shots and fancy shadow manipulation, and editing aiming to make the audience jittery (not jittery editing, because the effects were clearly planned carefully by Ray and Sherman Todd). Credit for the cinematography goes to the underappreciated George E. Diskant, who also lensed "A Woman's Secret" and On Dangerous Ground and "The Racket" for Ray ... and, later, one of my favorite tv series ever, the all-too-short-lived "The Rogues").

The story? Of yes, the story. Well it's one of the many doomed young lovers on the run from relentless if not particularly efficient legal authorities, half way (in time) between You Only Live Once and "Bonnie and Clyde" (the success of the latter led to a rash of romantic desperadoes-on-the-run movies including "Badlands" and "Thieves Like Us" that blur together in my memory). The movie begins after the escape from a Texas penitentiary of two hardened bank robbers (Jay C. Flippen and Howard Da Silva) and young and exceptionally handsome youth, Bowie Bowers (Farley Granger), convicted at age 14 for murder. For someone who has grown up in prison (he is supposed to have spent seven years there), Bowie is incredibly unhardened.

At the start, Bowie's leg is hurt (which leads to being stored in the latticework until nightfall, when Keechie (top-billed Cathy O'Connell who also was partnered with Granger in Anthony Mann's chase-filled noir "Side Street" in 1950) appears in a pickup truck (with headlights to provide dramatic lighting for the scared Bowie). In the first half of the movie Keechie if very tough, almost as tough and sullen as Mercedes McCambridge in "Johnny Guitar." The second half I'll get to.

Keechie is the niece of 'One-Eye' Mobley (Da SIlva) and the daughter of a shifty drunkard played by Will Wright. After recuperating and tentatively flirting with Keechie for an unspecified duration of time, Bowie is ready to perform as get-away driver for bank robberies. The robbers pile up money, but eventually 'One Eye' shoots a policeman with Bowie's gun, and the gun is left in a car that is torched (which has no effect on Bowie's fingerprints; why those of 'One Eye' are not also on it is left unexplained).

Bowie and Keechie take off into the hills (supposedly Texas Hill Country, but obviously California), after being married at a bus stop by a smarmy but not totally unscrupulous chaplain played by Ian Wolfe. There is something of a short idyll (although the owner of the isolated motel, Byron Foulger in a quirky role, seems unreliable). Meanwhile, out in the "real world" bank robberies are being attributed to "Bowie the Kid" and his gang. (There is a bit of Fritz Lang-like critique of new media sensationalism here.) No viewer then or now could possibly doubt that the lovers are doomed. The only question is whether both will be gunned down (as in "You Only Live Once" and "Bonnie and Clyde") or only the male one (as in Altman's version, "Breathless," and, if memory correctly serves, Malick's "Badlands"). Far be it form me to spoil the only suspense, though I will say that the trap is set up with admirable visuals, including those of Helen Craig's emoting.

The running time is only 95 minutes, but for all the bravura camerawork and editing, the plot is so predictable and the types so familiar that I can understand why RKO executives questioned whether the movie was entertaining. They shelved it, but it was a critical and box-office hit in England, so was released in 1949 in the US market.

I realize that I'm seeing it through the haze of many later movies influenced by "They Live by Night" (and by "You Only Live Once," another Godard favorite, BTW). Keechie becomes softer and more sympathetic in the second half of the movie, and, by the end is pregnant. Farley Granger, ca. 1947 (between "Rope" and "Strangers on a Train"), was strikingly handsome—in my opinion, more so than Guy Madison, who was considered the most handsome leading man of mid-20th-century Hollywood. Granger was tall, dark, and handsome. His lankiness, physical hesitancy, and softly yearning voice remind me of pre-WWII James Stewart (without any cracking of voice).

I've already mentioned that Granger's Bowie is unbelievably unspoiled by seven formative years in prison. The script keeps him preternaturally innocent, unable to understand that he is certain to be hunted down for his crimes, that he cannot retire with his loot and live happily ever after (especially without crossing the border...). The audience is more than invited to sympathize with him. He is considerably easier to like than his two crime partners, who are nasty pieces of work (especially 'One Eye'), but he was in prison for murder, has become at least an accomplice to killing a policeman, and guilty of multiple counts of armed robbery.

On not crying for the "tragedy" of Bowie

I balk at the invitation to identify with the soulful eyes and guileless expression of Bowie. It seems to me that way too many movies invite viewers to side with criminals in heists and armed robberies. I don't see why robbers should be considered heroes, or, in this instance, why so much sympathy should be sought by the film-makers for Bowie. He's no Robin Hood doing anything for the losers in the battle for survival in heartless capitalism. I don't see any reason that someone who has done what he has deserves to be left alone to enjoy the net of his crimes, even if he is not as ugly and mean as 'One Eye.' It's one thing to escape from a frame-up (as, for instance, Lauren Bacall helping escaped convict Humphrey Bogart to do in "Dark Passage" or trying to help Charles Boyer in "Confidential Agent") another (forbidden by the Production Code) to get away with crimes (though I feel some sympathy for Fred MacMurray in "Double Indemnity" and John Garfield in "The Postman Always Rings Twice" because they were manipulated by ultrablonde femmes fatales, whereas Bowie cast his lots with 'One Eye' before the start of the movie). So, the bottom line for me is "Doomed and handsome is not enough for me to empathize or consider this criminal a victim of his upbringing in and out of the Texas penitentiary" (and that it is probably better to be gunned down than to be condemned to a long life in prison... so I am not entirely immune to the glamorization of "Life fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse," I guess).


Recommended:
Yes