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Jan 22, 2011 · They Live By Night starts by serenading the sweet embraces of Farley Granger’s Bowie and O’Donell’s naive Keechie. The musical strings become threatening and the Titles roll as an old jalopy is driving eclipsed by the words They Live By Night .
- Love in Struggle
- Reflections of Private Life
- Anticipation in Retrospect
The lovers in question are Bowie and Keechie (Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell, respectively). Misguided youth is something a lot of movies explore, but one thing that stands out about They Live by Nightis that there isn’t much rebelliousness involved. Bowie and Keechie have never known anyone or anything from outside a world on the fringes of th...
Film noir is usually associated with a sense of menace, and although They Live by Nightlives instead on innocence and tragedy, it still has the look and feel of a noir. As the title implies, it takes place mostly at night, and therefore in shadow or with only artificial light sources. It’s appropriate to the criminal world Bowie and Keechie came fr...
Most of the interesting or expressive things They Live by Night does are put into practice in more complex and dramatic ways in Ray‘s later films. The melodrama of Johnny Guitar, the use of stock footage in The Lusty Men, and the judiciously placed soundtrack of Bitter Victory can all be seen as variations on elements seen in They Live by Night. An...
The tragedy of "They Live By Night" is that Bowie wants to turn a corner and live an honest life, but there's no possible path to redemption for him. My favorite aspect of the film is its subtle but searing criticism of throwing children into the prison system and ruining the rest of their lives.
Jun 23, 2011 · In Anderson’s novel, both central protagonists, the young lovers Keechie and Bowie, are killed in a police ambush, like their real-life counterparts Bonnie and Clyde earlier in the 1930s.
- George Kaplan
They Live by Night is a 1948 American film noir directed by Nicholas Ray in his directorial debut and starring Cathy O'Donnell and Farley Granger. Based on Edward Anderson's Depression-era novel Thieves Like Us , the film follows a young fugitive who falls in love with a woman and attempts to begin a life with her.
The fatalistic story told about a newly-married, naive and innocent couple's ill-fated and doomed relationship from the start, whose short-lived romance and marital life were sidetracked by the temptations of being drawn back into a criminal lifestyle.
They Live by Night. Legendary director Nicholas Ray began his career with this lyrical film noir, the first in a series of existential genre films overflowing with sympathy for America’s outcasts and underdogs.
