‘They Live by Night’ or — An Inverted Bonnie and Clyde?
He, “Bowie” (Farley Granger), is on the run after a jailbreak. He’s somewhat naive which is possibly why he was convinced by the two older cons he’s escaped with that his best bet to get out of prison is to break-out, rob a bank then use the stolen money to hire a lawyer to overturn his case as one of wrongful conviction. So yeah — he’s not too wise.
She, “Keechie” (Cathy O’Donnell), dresses like a tomboy and we suspect this might be a possible defence to ward off unwanted sexual advances from the men in her life. Either way, she needs a way out.
They meet, fall in love and drive off into the night-shrouded landscape looking for the “honest life” promised by society. But does such a thing exist?
Nicholas Ray’s ‘They Live by Night’ (1948) is in many ways your typical young criminal lovers on the run flick except with one big difference from many of the other movies of this type — we actually care for these two kids! Unlike the couples in ‘Gun Crazy’ (1950), ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ (1967) or ‘Badlands’ (1973) Keechie and Bowie aren’t psychopaths with a love of violence but are desperately seeking decency, normality, to the point that when Bowie hears over the radio that he’s now called “The Kid” and is mistakenly referred to as the leader of the gang he reacts in total disgust whilst his fellow con writhes with jealousy at such glorious notoriety.
These two kids, and they are kids, aren’t evil; they’re playing at being adults like trying on a parent’s hat or make-up. Their dreams are innocent, pure even. What isn’t innocent or pure is the society that surrounds them (these poor kids never stood a chance).
Everyone they meet, every person they encounter is broken by some form of corruption. A “minister” marries them yet happily admits he only provides people with their dreams if they can pay and it soon becomes apparent he’s intimately connected to the underworld and can also provide other “dreams” for those who need to pay for them.
This purity of Keechie and Bowie is further emphasised by an unexpected Christmas motif. It’s not just that the film takes place during the festive period but more that we soon discover Keechie is pregnant whilst Bowie, like a gasoline-powered Joseph, drives them around looking for an available room at any of the roadside inns.
Meanwhile, the “real adults” — one-eyed thugs, murderers, blackmailers — set about destroying the fabric of their own country. The danger isn’t coming from within the kids themselves but the outside world intruding on them, something made explicit when, in the midst of a romantic reverie, a drunken lout unexpectedly falls onto the lovers.
Even the usual “moral” force of the police takes a backseat and functions not as a possible saviour for the couple but more as an emotionally detached sword of Damocles waiting for its moment to fall (nothing personal, kids).
There’s plenty of technical élan to praise here — that arresting opening helicopter shot, the surreal anthropomorphised shadow of the water-cooler with the detective’s trilby perched on top it, the way the soundtrack’s musical score “dies” with the burning car — yet it is the tenderness, especially as the film moves forward towards its climax, with which Keechie and Bowie are treated by Ray that’s the real pull here.
In terms of lovers-on-the-run flicks this is one of the most touching as they’re viewed with such delicate humanity, whereas as far as the rest of society goes we get the feeling of Ray ferociously putting the fucking boot in.
