They Live By Night (1948 Nicholas Ray)

A New Wave favourite, here's Truffaut writing in the fifties: "We discovered Nicholas Ray about seven or eight years ago with Knock on Any Door. Then there was the dazzling confirmation of They Live By Night, which is still his best film." And Godard's debut Breathless also features a young girl who's mixed up with a criminal, and which ends tragically.

It begins straight in the middle of the action (and hardly pauses for breath) with hardened criminals 'one eye' Howard da Silva and Jay C. Flippen and young Farley Granger as prison farm escapees, taking refuge with alky Will Wright and daughter Cathy O'Donnell, with whom Granger becomes instantly smitten. (Some of their exchanges are great, demonstrating much naivety on both sides e.g. "Wasn't there even a boy who used to walk you to church on Sunday?" "No, do you think there should have been?" - after all, the film opens declaring that this couple haven't learned to grow into the world properly.) The couple's happy moments are like isolated pockets of sun in a dark storm. It's clear they have both had a pretty shit upbringing.

Suggestion here of being behind bars?

Good immediate filming was what must have appealed to our New Wavers, unusual helicopter shots which track some of the progress of what is essentially an early road movie; a great bank robbery shot from the back seat of a car (George E Diskant) putting us in to the action, an abrupt car crash and execution. With lots of noiry double crossing film leads inexorably to tragedy and reminded me most strongly of Bonnie and Clyde and Malick's later Badlands, and thus is influential on many fronts.

Good acting (O'Donnell especially; I just realised she's Harold Russell's fiancée in Best Years of Our Lives). Produced by John Houseman with music by Leigh Harline; for RKO.

P.S. 24/1/22 I read today that Charles Brackett worked on this script in 1944.