They Live By Night 1949

 An American masterpiece directed by Nicholas Ray. Opening with a dramatic arial shot of a speeding car along a dusty country road, we are soon introduced to 3 escape convicts who have high jacked a car from a trusting farmer. They show him some mercy by only knocking him out instead of killing him. The three cons are played by Jay C. Flippen as T-Dub a fearless character actor if ever there was one, Howard Da Silva frightening  as the one eyed Cyclops Chickamaw (yes I know his one eye is not in the center of his face, and the young and handsome Farley Granger as Bowie. The gang holes up in the backwoods cabin of  De Silva’s drunk and lazy brother  (well played by  another ever present  wonderful character actor Will Wright ) and his lovely young daughter Keechie played by Cathy O’Donnell. The three cons plan a bank robbery and they do pull it off getting quite a bit of money from the heist, but soon things start to go bad and everything is falling on them so they take it on the lam leaving Granger and O’Donnell to fall in love. The couple hastily decide to get married in a morose and depressing ceremony at a roadside wedding chapel where a jaundiced justice of the peace played with relish by Ian Woolfe reigns. They are soon on the run as Granger is being blamed unfairly for all of gang’s dirty dealings. His beautiful  face is in all the papers, and he is being set up to take the fall by Helen Craig who plays Mattie a friend of the crooks. Mattie is the poison nectar of the piece, a dark Greek chorus of one who makes a deal with the authorities to get her husband out of prison if she tells them where Bowie and Keechie are hiding out. 

Craig who was an odd and striking actress makes one hell of an impression but unfortunately did very few films along with a bit of t.v. before fading unfairly into oblivion. At one time the film was going to be called “Your Red Wagon” (in fact the paperback movie tie-in published in 1948 uses this title), and there is a nice small moment in the film, when the couple have a night out on the town and go to a nightclub where the African American singer Marie Bryant wonderfully warbles a song called “Your Red Wagon”. The couple on the lam is nothing new in American movies, the earliest one that comes to mind is Fritz Lang’s 1937 film “You Only Live Once”, and in the same year “They Live By Night” was released “Gun Crazy” which is a rougher nastier film then this one also saw the light or noir of day. Remade in 1974 by Robert Altman using the title of the original Edward Anderson novel “Thieves Like Us” and setting it in the 1930’s where the novel takes place and not in the late 1940’s where Ray’s version is set. No doubt production budgets and not aesthetics had a lot to do with this decision. With  beautiful black and white cinematography by George E. Diskant.  One of the ten best films of 1949.