A crime story wrapped up in a love story so sad it’ll have you sobbing all over your satin undies. It’s one of the classic doomed romances in movies. It’s director Nicholas Ray’s first film and he makes it a great one.
Most movies about couples who are on the run from the law portray at least one of them as someone who’s perfectly fine with the criminal life, a la Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy. In They Live By Night though, both Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell DESPERATELY want to live like normal people. He’s a 23 year old prison escapee who’s been locked up on a dubious murder conviction since age 16; she’s the ragamuffin teenage daughter of a lowly gas station owner who’s dragged into sheltering fugitives. Neither has ever been involved with the opposite sex before. They don’t even know how to kiss. They flirt like insecure 9 year olds. They’re both pretty to look at and are gentle souls at heart though, so they fall in love and take off together.
Two things stand in the way of their happiness: The law, who are constantly on the lookout for Granger, and Granger’s prison escapee cohorts, hardened bad guys who want his help robbing banks.
The great performances (from the gorgeous Cathy O’Donnell, in particular) and Nicholas Ray’s eccentric eye pull you in right from the start here.
Based on the novel Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson. This was shot in 1947 only to sit unreleased for two years while that nutbag Howard Hughes took over RKO.