They Live by Night
The first time I saw Nick’s film, They Live by Night, was in 2000, on video. I was resistant because it was made in the 1940s and I have attention deficit disorder when it comes to watching movies made before 1950. Usually, I find the language dated, the pace too slow, and the sound stilted. I was watching They Live by Night for reasons other then entertainment, though. I was watching in anticipation of receiving some sort of message from my father. I got one right away. There’s a close up shot of Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell) and Bowie (Farley Granger) with titles at the bottom of the screen that read: “This boy…and this girl…were never properly introduced to the world we live in.” Bingo. I was never properly introduced to the world.
Excerpt. Ray by Ray: A Daughter’s Take on the Legend of Nicholas Ray © All Rights Reserved.
In his treatment of They Live by Night, Nick wrote, “This is not an underworld movie—no lurid tale of blood or squalor. It is tender, not cynical; tragic, not brutal. It is a Love Story; it is also a morality story—in the tempo of our time…The chase and the romance of two lost kids, who have never been properly introduced to the world. Their need for each other is as deep and ill-starred as was the love of Romeo and Juliet, and their happiness reins just about as long.”
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve sat in front of the television set watching this movie looking for insights into my father’s psyche. With every viewing I sit in anticipation, waiting for its message. Bowie and Keechie are so far removed from society that it feels like only their love for each other can take the loneliness away. I asked the film scholar Jeanine Basinger how she thought Nick created this underlying feeling. She said, “You see how Bowie and Keechie are disconnected from the rest of the world. The framing frequently isolates them from other people. The lighting bathes them in a world of darkness and loneliness and isolation which their love illuminates.”
What ways do you think They Live by Night made Nicholas Ray stand out?
Renegade ‘til the End
1970s
photo ©Mark Goldstein
“I have always had an affection for the outlaw. I prefer him to the banker, who is the more respectable outlaw.”
When I met Ray at Al’s Bar in downtown Los Angeles on New Years Eve 1981, I found the person I was meant to be with. He was the Bowie to my Keechie. Ray planned robberies with his friends in the living room of our one-bedroom house on Venice Way, three blocks from the Venice Beach Boardwalk, while I looked the other way. Bowie was a bank robber who had escaped prison where he was serving time for a murder he committed when he was sixteen. Ray escaped from a juvenile detention-prison when he was sixteen.
Excerpt from Ray by Ray: A Daughter’s Take on the Legend of Nicholas Ray ©All Rights Reserved
