THEY LIVE BY NIGHT (1948) Meet Bowie and Keechie, a slightly kinder, gentler Bonnie and Clyde

Cult Director Nicholas Ray's THEY LIVE BY NIGHT is an expressionistic blend of melodrama and film noir. Based on the novel "Thieves Like Us," it’s about violent bank robbers and tragic destiny, about flight and pursuit across the Midwestern roads and farmland, permeated with a sweetness and vulnerability unusual for any crime movie. (Sound like Arthur Penn's BONNIE AND CLYDE?) At its center are Bowie (Farley Granger) and Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell), naive young lovers who are almost childlike in their gravity and grace, and whose entanglement in a web of hardened criminals (Howard Da Silva and J.C. Flippin) pre-ordains them for tragedy. From the startling pre-credit sequence on, it is clear that Ray is speaking in a striking new cinematic voice. Unfortunately the story is derivative and not even all that interesting, but the way it's told must have astonished audiences back then. From unusual aerial shots, to brilliant extreme close-ups, to great shots inside cars, Ray takes us on a new type of film journey. He also lovingly films his two attractive young leads and extracts strong performances from them. The film's greatest scene is their wedding: a two-dollar affair in an unfamiliar city. In this hastily concocted ceremony, a near-travesty, we can see the couple desperately reaching for normality that we viewers have already figured is totally beyond their reach. (Film note: Produced by RKO, the film wasn't released for almost two years because the studio's owner, Howard Hughes, believed it to be a dud. Today, it's a cult classic.)