User reviews

This was the first pairing of Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell and it was successful enough so that the two worked together two years later in "Side Street. I heard that this movie was sort of a early "Bonnie and Clyde," and it was, but only to a degree.

Granger and O'Donnell didn't really dominate the screen until after 40 minutes but after that, it was mostly them. Frankly, I enjoyed the first 40 minutes best when Howard da Silva and J.C. Flippen shared the screen time. They were great film noir characters in this movie (and they did come back in the second half, livening up the film again.) I liked their names in here: da Silva was "Chicamaw." and Flippen was "T-Dub." In most of the second half of this movie, it went from a noir to a romance. but that's not surprising knowing the director was Nicholas Ray.

This is the best I've ever seen O'Donnell, who never impressed me much but she's impressive here with a fine performance and a nice '40s look to her. She had a strange character name, too: "Keechie." Granger ("Arthur Bowers") does a nice job, too. For an uneducated thug, he sure comes across as a really nice guy. It's kinda of weird. He reminded me of John Dall in "Gun Crazy" (1950). Some of the camera-work also reminded me of "Gun Crazy."

However, one major detail should be noted: unlike "Gun Crazy" and "Bonnie & Clyde," the two lovers in this movie did NOT rob banks together. O'Donnell's character never gets involved in any crime, so comparing this film to those doesn't really fit. Most of "Keechie's" time is spent living in a remote cabin lodge, and suggesting periodically to her husband that he go straight - a far cry from the women Peggy Cummins and Faye Dunaway played.

Like a lot of good film noirs, this also has some very good supporting actors who play weird people, and say weird things. Some of the dialogue in this movie is fascinating because it's so odd. One example is the guy who marries the couple for $20. Another is Keechie's father.

This is a odd little "B" noir/melodrama and definitely one that film noir fans should check out. Romantics will like it, too. I'm glad it is now available on disc, as part of the Film Noir Classics Collection Volume 4.

They Live By Night (AKA: The Twisted Road) is directed by Nicholas Ray and written by Ray and Charles Schnee who adapt from Edward Anderson's novel Thieves Like Us. It stars Cathy O'Donnell, Farley Granger, Howard Da Silva & Jay C. Flippen. Produced by John Houseman out of RKO, it's photographed by George E. Diskant and music is by Leigh Harline.

Ray's debut feature (it was actually wrapped in 1947) is a potent piece of film noir set during the Great Depression. Story follows Bowie (Granger), a naive young man who escapes from prison with two hardened criminals, Chicamaw (Da Silva) & T-Dub (Flippen), and finds unexpected love in the form of the almost saintly Keechie (O'Donnell). However, he finds that no matter what his good intentions are, crime just wont leave him be and with Keechie in tow, goes on the run to hopefully find a better life.

It's a pretty simple story all told, one that has been well represented in film over the years with the likes of You Only Live Once, High Sierra & Gun Crazy. But as simple as the tale is, Ray's film is very much a leading light in the sub-genre of "lovers on the lam" movies. First thing of note is that there's a movement away from the normal characters that had frequented the noir driven crime world up till now. The protagonists here are not gangsters or private investigators, they are thieves, and country folk too. This offers up a different viewing character wise. Admittedly the protagonists are shrouded in classic film noir hopelessness, where the air of desperation hangs heavy throughout, but the characterisation shift gives the simple story a lift.

From the outset it's evident that this is an intriguing, even curious, picture. A shot of our loving couple sharing a kiss is accompanied with a title card telling us that they were never properly introduced to the world we live in. A blast of Harline's music startles them and we then cut to an aerial shot (Ray leading the way for helicopter shots) of the three escapee's in the getaway car. In those 30 seconds Ray has managed to convey that his film will be an energetic, yet doom laden, love story. Quite a feat for a fledgling director to be unique right from the off. It's interesting to note that Ray himself said that he wasn't trying to make a film noir movie, he was merely telling a tragic love story. Just another point of reference as to why the film is so fascinating.

Be that as it may, They Live By Night pulses with noir blood. From its perpetual moody atmospherics, to the romantic narrative being punctured by moments of violence, it deserves its classic film noir status. 8/10

An early, nearly-forgotten picture from the director of "Rebel Without a Cause", this story of fugitive love (though not in the same was as "Bonnie and Clyde" or "Gun Crazy") is in its own right a rather accomplished picture.

Farley Granger is best remembered for his Hitchcock roles, and he gives a good, multifaceted performance. It's clear from the get-go that despite the company he keeps and despite his time in prison, he's really a scared, uncertain kid. Cathy O'Donnell is all but forgotten, but here gives a nearly Oscar-calibre performance, extremely convincing and appealing as his naive bride.

The film is also notable for early use of helicopter shots of cars, and for its refusal to vilify either the criminals or the cops (one of the policemen admits that "the system failed him", an astonishing statement for 1949).

All in all, a film which deserves to be resurrected from its obscurity.

Nicholas Ray is mostly known for his work, "Rebel WIthout a Cause", but his first work, a dazzling, moving (if sentimental) film noir, is far better. Unjustly out-of-print, "They Live By Night" may have its minor flaws, but the stark, beautiful camerawork, stolid dialogue and (perhaps above all) exquisite performances make up for it. It has none of the often phony emotions and annoying characters that are found in "Rebel Without a Cause."

Bowie, the innocent, sympathetic outlaw hero of "They Live By Night" is a wonderfully drawn. By no means is he the cliched nice-guy-in-a-bad-situation; though essentially good-hearted, he can be frighteningly callous at times. Farley Granger, working with excellent direction, he gives us glimpses of a violent yet passionate nature, struggling against the condemnation of society. Cathy O'Donnell is also entrancingly tender, yet we can vaguely see that her character is trapped in a hopeless relationship with Bowie. She is also sadly obscure, which plainly has nothing to do with her talent.

The one significant fault of this film is over-restraint. At times, Ray's understated direction can be extremely effective, such as when he is dealing with violence. But at other times the characters' (and especially Keechie's) emotions are so tightly controlled that some of the impact on the audience is lost. Still, despite a few faults, "They Live By Night" is a wonderful film, and if ever you can find it, sell your hair but GET IT!!!

Farley Granger plays Bowie, a young con who escapes from the pen with two hardened criminals, Chicamaw and T-Dub played respectively by Howard Da Silva and Jay C Flippen in They Live By Night, an aptly titled film if there ever was one. Da Silva and Flippen are both terrific here, as is Cathy O'Donnel as Keechie, Bowie's equally young girlfriend. The movie revolves around the relationship between them and their efforts to get away from the life of crime that is always a few steps behind them and also to try living like normal people, during the day, instead of at night, like their criminal associates. This was Nicholas Ray's first film as a director and it certainly was a worthy effort, as it has fine performances throughout, especially O'Donnels. As the film comes to a close, you can pretty well figure out the ending, but that doesn't detract from its potency, as they are let down by one of their own, blackmailed it seems by the cops.

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.

Nicholas Ray's first film is a fascinating, enveloping example of a filmmaker getting as much as he can out of so little. His film was made under the radar at RKO, despite having John Houseman as a producer. While also having a cast of really unknowns, he also uses it to his advantage to tell a small story very well. It's close to being one of the more 'text-book' examples, in the story's core, in the history of B-noir (film-noir that didn't get the hype of The Big Sleep or Out of the Past, star vehicles as much as unique thrillers). Bowie (Farley Granger, soon to be a Hitchcock stock-player) escapes from jail with the help of a couple of bank robbers who make him, as they say, "an investment." He meets a girl, Keechie (Cathy O'Donnell), daughter of a farmer they pass by, and he becomes friends with her, so to speak. She agrees to leave town with him and they also decide, almost on a whim, to get married (for twenty bucks no less). But soon, very soon, fall in love, however, despite the checkered and now notorious past catching up to Bowie.

Obviously, if you're looking for stellar, "method" acting, look elsewhere in the main performances. But they do have enough of a pull in their chemistry on screen- sometimes rough and spelling of their doomed relationship, other times tragically tender- to back up the best aspects to the film. The true pleasures in seeing They Live By Night are the details that Ray lays in the scenes, bits of life probably taken from the book the movie's based on. Godard once proclaimed that Ray "IS cinema". If this statement does hold validity to a degree, it shows for certain even in Ray's debut in the scenes with the secondary platers. Such as the wedding scene, or in general with the dialog in the script (i.e. "Between him and the chicken, I'd bet on the chicken", or "I'm the black sheep" "the only thing black about you are your eyelashes), or even with the strengths in Ray's camera as a simple storyteller. In a sense this cuts right to the chase with the theme of doomed youth, years before Rebel Without a Cause yet with the given desperation of the noir films.

While generally less seen than Ray's other films (though more attributable to being less available on video), it's likely one of his best; a powerful mix of the bittersweet tale of a criminal and his love that would decades later meld with other crime-film elements into a work like True Romance.

Nicholas Ray's first feature film is the prototype for the lovers on the lam genre, generally suggested to foreshadow Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde. I enjoy it for different reasons that for the more contemporary ones. It may not be as intense as those, nor as intense as some of Ray's later efforts such as the unadorned masterpiece In a Lonely Place, but we sympathize on a much purer level with Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell's young lovers here than we do with Bonnie and Clyde or the violent lovers of Gun Crazy or much more extreme and shocking variations on that assembly line like Natural Born Killers, Criminal Lovers or Baise Moi. Granger and O'Donnell, two young specimens whose beautiful faces radiate with solemn innocence, find the seeds of love in their first incidental meetings with one another in spite of their cataclysmic circumstances and dangerous dynamics. Indeed, the film is in no small part owing to the argument of heredity vs. environment, which one bears in mind throughout as we not only follow the external plot but also the emotional process of the chemistry between the two leads.

Perhaps the movie doesn't take enough chances with Granger's circumstances. He escapes from prison with two hardened down-home bank robbers Chicamaw and T-Dub, but rather than being a part of their underworld economy, though he does find himself planning a heist with them to, in a strange, roundabout way, bring justice to his initial imprisonment, he is fleeing the condemnation of an unjust murder charge. This flaw cannot be argued as a bedrock but if he were a young, budding career thief himself, the audience's sense of morality and justice would be given more vigorous exercise. It would make O'Donnell's love for him ironically more ennobled by not only siding with him against the way the world has treated him, but also by seeing through the way he has treated the world.

I was enthralled by the physicality of the two lovers, stressed by Ray in unusual ways. We first see the angelic Cathy O'Donnell in a baggy, oil-stained jumpsuit. She is the daughter of a gas station owner. Her beauty either radiates through the adventitious scuzziness, inherits a raw carnal edge by it, or both. Granger is a swarthy young boy, his anger perpetuated by his submissiveness in his situations, against which he gradually begins to recklessly rebel. Much in the same way we can see Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart baring their most guileless identities, almost too painfully, in the great film Ray made the next year, In a Lonely Place, Granger and O'Donnell are a younger and more socially subversive precursor. Though the story itself may not sizzle with more tension, we feel very deeply for the two lovers based on the sheer presence of their actors.

This is a very good film noir movie with excellent performances from the leads Farley Granger (of Hitchcock's "Rope" and "Strangers on a Train" and another great film noir movie "The Edge of Doom") and Cathy O'Donnell, whom I have not seen in any other role. Howard Da Silva also gives an excellent performance as a "one-eyed lush" of a gangster. I saw this movie as a teenager when it first came out and had not seen it since until recently, but I still think it holds up well as a movie well worth watching. Farley Granger, who tired of being cast as a "pretty boy" in trouble with the law and sought his fortunes elsewhere, in Europe, was a big loss to American movies.

Classic film noir has Granger as one of three criminals who escape from prison and continue to rob and kill. He is injured and is nursed back to health by Cathy O'Donnell and they fall in love with each other but must stay on the run now that he is seen as the gang leader.

Interesting and quite moving combination of gritty / brutal film noir and love story, with both elements handled equally well. Granger is spot on as the scared but brutal young hoodlum who genuinely adores O'Donnell and moves well between these two characteristics m, with O'Donnell equally compelling as the doe eyed girl who worships him.

"They Live By Night" joins "Gun Crazy" (1949) and "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) to form a little trilogy of remarkable films in the "lovers-on-the-lam" sub-genre. Nicholas Ray's film has much in common with "Gun Crazy," both in look and theme, but it's a much warmer and more emotionally effective piece of film-making. Peggy Cummins gave a fascinating performance in "Gun Crazy" as a flinty, unbelievably callous femme fatale; Cathy O'Donnell in "They Live By Night" will break your heart.

Indeed, the acting is probably this film's greatest asset, and it enables what in all respects is a B movie to feel like an A one. Farley Granger and O'Donnell bring wonderful nuances to their roles, and they have a naturalistic style of acting that feels ahead of its time when compared to other films from the same period. Howard da Silva is also tremendous in the supporting role of Chickamaw, managing to create a grotesque character who nevertheless feels at home in the very human world created by Ray. And Helen Craig shines in a small but vital role as Mattie, who may be the most heartless character in the film.

At a time when America most likely just wanted to hurry up and get everything back to normal, how shocking that a film like this would emerge. The domestic contentment that Granger and O'Donnell establish for themselves is a sham; they know it and we know it. They're living on borrowed time, and the things that the average American strived for in a booming post-war climate--loving spouse, children, safe and secure home--exist in this film as taunting reminders of blessings this couple can never have.

And the ending---that could have been so sentimental and is instead in Ray's hands so spare and sad---just may well take your breath away.

Grade: A+

If you are looking for a fast-paced, quick-talking, shoot-em-up noir - this ain't it; from a complex web of relationships between ex-convicts emerges a couple of lovers who eventually go on the run. Exquisitely shot, artfully acted but low budget - this is a more delicate work-of-art than a robust B film (despite the very noirish title). Occasionally maudlin and glacially-paced - this was not exactly what I expect from a noir. Still, there is an air of paranoia and doom, and a few nasty unlikeable characters, with some moral dilemmas and ambivalent choices. A convoluted enough plot in the background is driven by some unsavoury characters who clearly have had a history with each other - it shows in how it's played. A worthy film - slow but soulful.

It seems the people who really enjoyed this flick as an example of noir are folks who focus a lot more on cinematography and film-making than the average viewer. (I don't know if the helicopter shots, for instance, were ground-breaking.) However, I can say that as simply a casual viewer who enjoys a good noir film, this one missed the mark. Is it noir or sappy romance? I felt like the director couldn't decide. The main actors seemed too baby-faced to carry off noir, imho, since the hardened characters in noir plots usually need to be a little bit more mature to have gained their worldly experiences. When compared with films like "Double Indemnity" and "Touch of Evil," "They Live by Night" just can't hold its own. Unless you're a total noir buff, I'd skip this one. There's even an old Nancy Davis (Reagan) film called "Shadow on the Wall" that few people have seen that I liked better than this one, fwiw.

A beautiful yet bleak movie about doomed young love on the run. The debut directorial feature of Nicholas Ray, it starts with three escaped prisoners on the run, roughing up the driver of a car they've hijacked after robbing a bank, two of them are seasoned old pros, but the third is a fresh-faced youngster imprisoned for a murder committed when he was a teenager. Although grateful for their springing him, he is resistant to their future plans to continue a life of crime. When they turn up at a safe house peopled by an old alcoholic friend and his young daughter, she makes clear her distaste for the three escapees. Tomboyish, with her hair up and dressed in overalls, she softens to the fresh-faced lad as she nurses him through an injury he's picked up on the road.

Soon they fall in love and decide to hit the road themselves, paying $20 dollars for a cut-price marriage but while they dream of carefree days ahead, in truth, they're always looking over their shoulders, fearing his discovery by the authorities, but when he's tracked down by his old cronies and forced into another bank job which goes wrong, his notoriety only increases and you just know his days are numbered.

Central to the film is the chemistry between its young stars Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell, as Bowie and Keechy, both completely natural in their roles. Production Code morality of the day ensures that Granger's Bowie character is duly punished for his misdemeanours but all the way you're rooting for the youngsters to somehow come through.

Starkly filmed by Ray, he ramps up the emotional tension as every time the couple find some solace and calm on their travels something happens to set them back. A last-ditch attempt to escape to Mexico only confirms Bowie's hopelessness at his and Keechy's prospects leaving just one final betrayal to seal his fate. Shot in atmospheric black and white with many imaginatively staged scenes alternating tenderness and fear, perhaps the most striking use of Ray's cameras are the helicopter shots looking down on the fleeing characters even as their journeys will take all of them nowhere.

Watching the film, I was reminded of another earlier noir classic about ill-fated young love, Fritz Lang's superb "You Only Live Once". Both are dark, driven, doomy pieces, memorable and highly recommended, just don't look for happy endings. Even the movies don't all end that way.

This Film-Noir-inflected directorial debut feature of maverick US filmmaker Nicholas Ray is headlined by two young stars on the rising, Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell, as their escapist romance is par for the course of a sorry denouement which tallies with the now stock "lovers on the run" scenario, to today's audience, it is Ray's audacious craftsmanship leaving a hefty mark on the route.

Adapted from Edward Anderson's novel THIEVES LIKE US (from which Robert Altman would regurgitate his own version using the book's original title in 1974), the storyline revolves around a young convict Bowie (Granger), who escapes from prison with two senior bank robbers, Chicamaw (Da Silva, flaunting with his snarky, one-eyed menace to great effect) and T-Dub (Flippen, sports a hostile ruggedness likens Michael Shannon). After falling in with Keechie (O'Donnell), the daughter of their accomplice Mobley (Wright), Bowie develops a liking for her, when a road accident leaves Bowie in the caring hands of Keechie, they decide to elope, leaving everything behind, whether it is police force or Bowie's partners in crime.

Notably, the film vigorously lunges its opening gambit of chopper-aided aerial shots when the credits roll, quite a cutting-edge feat of its time, but if one thinks for granted that the movie would be heavy on the action front, a sly Ray proves otherwise, he spares us with all the robbery fracas and the upshots of peripheral players, because the movie's focus is unflinchingly zoomed in on the star-crossed lovers, close-ups expressively inspect their indecision, immaturity, callowness, but also their steely determination of finding a way out in spite of the mounting obstruction, Granger and O'Donnell both elicit emotively heart-rending renderings without any help of plot machinations, their ending is foreseeable miles away, they are mired in a cul-de-sac, catching up with a scintilla of hope and affection before it's too late. Which is to say that in Ray's fabrication, one cannot help but discerning an overt proclivity for fatalism, a heady profusion of gloom, angst, and agitation, that would evolve into Ray's trademark in the years to come. Even in the supposedly jolly strains of YOUR RED WAGON interlude, Ray manifestly shows us the singer (Bryant), cadging cash out of punters and then brandishing it in front of our eyes, that's the world which entraps the two lovebirds, materialistic, corrupted and voracious.

Amongst the ragbag of supporting group, on the one hand, stage old-hand Helen Craig rounds out her celluloid debut with a stolid veneer cracked with tangible tinge of compunction in a femme fatale role; and on the other hand, productive character actor Ian Wolfe gives our two wet-behind- their-ears protagonists a good run for their money as the grasping matrimony officiator, who effortlessly hammers that last nail in their coffin without much of self-awareness. By and large, THEY LIVE BY NIGHT has professed to be an auspicious point of departure for an auteur-in-the- making, and of course, the best is yet to come.

This film really moved me in the way the lead characters Keechie and Bowie were portrayed. One of the best scenes is early when Farley Granger (Bowie) is asking Keechie if she has a fella, and if she would like one. It is very well done. Granger does a great job of playing the sweet but troubled young man caught in a jam. A sense of dread overtakes the picture as it moves towards its inevitable tragic conclusion. Overall, get your hands on this one if you can. The studio needs to release a DVD of it, anyone know anything about that?

Isn't it nice fantasizing that, sometimes, life can really run like in the Bowie/Keechie story? They just meet, fall in love each other and runaway together without hesitation; a few later, they accidentally see a chapel from the Greyhound bus stop and immediately get married at the low cost of 27 $, including the wedding ring and the tips for the best men: then their tragic life burns off very quickly, but... Isn't a similar perspective awfully alluring, somehow? The potency of this movie stays in summarizing the myth of the negative hero who fights to the bone, unsuccessfully trying to subvert his destiny in the name of love, that's a kind of 'evergreen' philosophy in making movies - a much better work by Nicholas Ray, I think, than the famous but fulsome "Rebel wirhout a cause".

Nicholas Ray's first feature, in 1949, was an adaptation of the novel Thieves Like Us (which Robert Altman so memorably filmed in the mid-1970s). It's a bit of a surprise to encounter the same characters -- Bowie, Keechie, T-Dub et al. -- in postwar black-and-white. Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell play the star-crossed lovers later rended by Keith Carradine and Shelly Duvall, and they bring a vulnerable, doomed edge to this very interesting, tragic movie. (Granger may never have been better during his brief bout of stardom). The supporting cast isn't quite up to the level of Altman's (without Louise Fletcher and her odd little girl), but on the whole this remains an honorable and moving piece of film art -- and a vital instalment, along with the same year's Gun Crazy (also a tale of doomed, romantic outlaws), in the noir cycle.

They Live By Night (1948) : Brief Review -

"I think a woman is sort of like a dog".. This is a real Romantic Noir with Killer dialogues. Among all the Noir films set in Romantic shell i have seen till date, They Live By Night surprised me the most. Because this film doesn't even try to generate sympathy for the leading character when we already he's gonna be punished at the end but before us he knows it himself. That's what i call perfect characterisation which was missing in some well known noir films. I personally didn't find them that great and i don't wanna name them here just to avoid direct comparison with They Live By Night but this one is Underrated compared to those some of overrated noir where either main hero or heroine doesn't make a sense. Here, there's is story of a young jailbait named Bowie who falls in love with a teenage girl who nurses him and adores him. They get married but somewhere Bowie knows he doesn't stand a chance to live with her in this civilised society and he had move away. In the meantime, a girl too is familiar with thier fate but never stops loving him. The narrative is simple and predictable yet it gets you moving along with it. Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell creates magnificent chemistry wherever there is a scope for them as an actors. There's is less Lust and more Love, i like it this way. Even though it comes to end with predictable scenerio, it still leave an impact on it's level. But what surprised me the most is the dialogues which stand out everything else in the film. I am taking couple of them with me forever, "A woman loves only once. I think a woman is sort of like a dog" and "I am not gonna sell you hopes when there ain't any". Watch out for the dialogues and you'll love them. Nicholas Ray unfolds the novel very well in cinematic portions despite the fact that Crime and Romance isn't a deadly combo. A rare Romantic Noir which seems like making a sense to me in all aspects. Please Do watch it.

RATING - 7.5/10*

By - #samthebestest

In Nicholas Ray's seminal crime drama They Live by Night, injured bank robber Bowie (Farley Granger) falls for the independent young rancher's daughter Keechie (Cathy O'Donnell), and the two use Bowie's ill-gotten gains to distance themselves from the authorities and the rest of Bowie's gang.

Bowie is the gang's wheelman, and when he's injured during a getaway, it's his newfound companion Keechie who gets to nurse him back to health while the others - Chickamaw (Howard da Silva) and T-Dub (Jay C. Flippen) - make themselves scarce. Keechie doesn't think much of her patient and his lifestyle. And make no mistake, Bowie feels little shame in his role, which has included murder. No bright-eyed neophyte, he. But there's something about Keechie, her deliberate movements, her slinky smile, that really appeals to Bowie, and the two slowly fall for each other.

The first shot by Ray (in his directorial debut) is an early helicopter angle, as the bad boys speed down a rural road as they escape from jail. In fact, it's the first helicopter action shot, as previous uses of the vehicle were simply to shoot landscapes to set a scene. In any event, a tire is blown and the gang heads toward a farmhouse, where they meet farmer Mobley (Will Wright) and his daughter Keechie. There's chemistry just dripping between Granger and O'Donnell; both seem more naive than they truly are, and although each pretends to dislike the other, it's not long before them old hormones come a-knocking, although not too much, because this is 1948, after all, and the movie's set some 15 years earlier. On the run they go! Ray's first feature is strikingly shot. Aside from that iconic opening helicopter shot, there's also a great little scene of the gang pulling off a job - from Bowie's perspective as the driver. A bystander tries to engage Bowie in conversation just as T-Dub and Chickamaw run out of the building, earning him a rough shove to the face. That's noir film for you. Watch your face! O'Donnell and Granger work very well together (no surprise, since the latter recommended the former for the role), although I think most of the appeal comes from O'Donnell, who turns in a graceful, passionate, and unique performance as the trusting Keechie. Granger, appearing in only his third film (with Rope on the horizon) was never really that good of an actor, and so many of his lines are delivered in an almost nonchalant monotone that you wonder if some lessons weren't in his immediate future. At least no one can accuse him of hamming it up.

And do you know who produced this masterpiece? None other than the great John Houseman, who most of us remember from his old Smith-Barney commercials but who was also one of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre performers back in the day. The man knew talent, and he picked Nicholas Ray to direct without input from the studio. It's to Houseman's credit that the movie's as good as it is - which is to say, a true noir classic. There may not be a Bonnie and Clyde ending, but we're not talking about a Disney finale, either. Bonus cameo - the jeweler who sells Bowie a watch is played by none other than Will Lee. Yes, the same Will Lee who would go on to play Mr. Hooper on Sesame Street.

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.

Apparently, this is considered by many to be a Nicholas Ray classic, but quite frankly, after watching it twice (the 2nd time just to make sure I hadn't missed something the first time) I don't know why. It starts off promising enough, but from around the point where Bowie the young theif, gives Keechie a watch, the movie begins to descend into a dull and drawn out affair, made worst by its predictability. The main point of the films second half is that the young couples love for each other is doomed, but its doom didn't come quick enough for me. Thats how tedious it becomes.