They Live By Night (1949) - Directed by Nicholas Ray

When I watched this film for the first time recently, it wasn't at all what I expected. I had heard many categorize this film as one of the great film noirs. For some reason, They Live By Night didn't seem to fit for me as a film noir. Yes it has plot elements that are film noir-like (heist, blackmail) but it doesn’t really fit my definition of film noir as the style is more focused on elevating romantic relationship dynamics and less on atmospherics and the darker, more oblique emotions typically found in film noir. There’s not enough seedyness or darkness to the protagonist, and there are too many stretches of the film that just don’t work for me as film noir. This doesn’t make the film inferior, but actually more mis-labeled perhaps. However, this doesn't change the fact that it’s one of Nicholas Ray’s best works. This is his first great masterpiece and is also a pre-curser to his later films that would explore the dilemmas at play in the domestic underbelly of the 1950’s.



Farley Granger plays Bowie, a 23-year old escaped murder convict who, along with two other escapees, Chickamaw (Howard Da Silva), and T Dub (Jay C. Flippen), find themselves holed up at Chickamaw’s house. It’s there that Bowie interacts with Chickamaw’s niece, Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell). They develop a bond based upon attraction and mutual inexperience with the opposite sex. Bowie has been in jail since age 16. Keechie looks and acts as if she’s never had a boyfriend. They are timid but they are instinctively drawn toward one another. The three men begin a plan for a bank heist, which they execute, but Bowie ends up on the run from authorities when his gun is found in the getaway car. He brings along Keechie, and this is where the film turns away from noir and focuses more on the love story, which drives the plot through the rest of the film.

Bowie and Keechie’s love story is the main and central reason for why the film works and what makes it essential for me. Their entire relationship feels very forward thinking in that it’s self-aware, open to awkwardness and to the moments where sexuality in a relationship is burgeoning but not yet understood. Ray’s film allows these two to just “be together” in several scenes that presage the dynamics that would be explored in the French New Wave films like Breathless (1959). Furthermore, the love story here captures an essence that would become the basis of Ray's masterpiece on youthful rebellion, Rebel Without a Cause (1955). James Dean's and Natalie Wood’s teenage projection of love, awkwardness and honesty in that film seems to have a genesis in the relationship at the heart of They Live By Night. In each film, there’s a similar quality to the onscreen kisses, to the dialogue, to the way the characters look at each other, to the way the camera regards them. Both films also speak to an eternally youthful spirit of spontaneity and, although to different degrees, rebellion. Ray also allows for an identification with a certain feeling of disenchantment, as both Bowie and Keechie are outsiders looking for some sort of comfort to hold on to.  This would of course come to a head most notably Rebel.

Ray’s concern with the family unit circa 1950 is also on display here. Keechie’s poor relationship with her Uncle echoes the strained relationships between father and son in both Rebel and Bigger Than Life (1956), and perhaps most importantly, is echoed in Natalie Wood’s painful relationship with an abusive father in Rebel. Once Bowie and Keechie get married, they also go through some tribulations and difficult domesticity issues. They are not able to grasp the rosy portrait of married life that they had aspired to have. These themes are also explored in Rebel and to a further extent in Bigger Than Life. I praise both Granger and O’Donnell for their natural and emotionally open performances, which for this era, was just beginning to occur with the new method style of acting. They have wonderful chemistry and their love story is one of the most electric I've seen from this era. Taken together, Ray’s films regarding youth, familial relationships, and married life from this period are some of the most sincere portraits surviving today. Watching them now still brings a refreshing spirit of honesty to the fore, leaving one to feel that nothing is hidden from the camera and these films can still play as remarkably insightful.

Bigger Than Life (1956) - Directed by Nicholas Ray

Nicholas Ray's towering masterpiece Bigger Than Life is a story about a man pushed to the brink and is an affront to the image of the perfect 1950's family unit that most films and television shows portrayed during that time period. Ray was always telling unique stories about unique individuals. In a Lonely Place (1950) was a film noir that looked at hidden secrets and a doomed affair between a hack writer and his sexy neighbor in an apartment complex. Rebel Without a Cause (1955) highlighted youth culture and rebellion, making James Dean into an icon. Even his brilliant Western, Johnny Guitar (1954) is atypical of the Westerns of the day, featuring campy innuendo and lurid performances. In Bigger Than Life, James Mason stars as Ed Avery, school teacher and family man. His family includes his wife Lou (Barbara Rush), who is cheerful and caring, always looking her best, and his son Richie (Christopher Olsen). After a dinner party that goes badly, Ed is taken to the hospital after a fainting spell, where he is diagnosed with a life threatening disease. He is told though, that Cortisone can be his cure, and so he begins regular doses. We quickly realize that Ed begins to have behavioral problems. He's unable to relate to his family the way he used to and begins to display erratic behavior. He also begins to take the pills more often and buys them in larger doses. The rest of the film is a wild ride following his addiction and family decline. This is a story that did not play well with audiences in 1956 and was considered a flop. Only after the Cahiers du Cinema writers (Francois Truffaut, Jacques Rivette etc.) began to hail Ray's and the film's praises did it start to gain acclaim.

I can think of no other film that exposes the facade of perfect 1950's suburban life as well as this one. One aspect that gives the film a creepy sterility and artful paranoia is the space created by the screen. CinemaScope, the lens created by 20th Century Fox in the early 1950's, created a massive widescreen. Scope ratios for these new widescreen formats at the time went up to 2.66:1. Bigger Than Life was a huge 2.55:1. As a comparison, widescreen ratios used today are usually no bigger than 2.35:1. With this expansive wide framing, Ray gives us deep shots within the Avery home, creating distance from husband to wife to son, emphasizing the chasm and disconnect that Ed creates for himself. We also sense the bigness of the home, with all the furniture laid out perfectly, every aspect of the home attended to. Their home feels devoid of genuine warmth and instead feels like they are people trapped within a geometric nightmare disguised as a home. This house becomes an ominous, manicured madhouse, filled with dysfunction as Ed's addiction escalates. It's a beautiful film and one filled with gorgeous images even though most of the film takes place indoors. Color is emphasized with mostly gray used to parallel the state of the family dynamic, occasionally punctuated by bright colors which highlight the clashes between the father, mother and son.

James Mason probably gives the performance of his career as Ed. This film was a labor of love for him as he co-wrote (un-billed) the script and produced the film as well. He is convincing as a straight-laced family man of the 1950's, but also an addict swinging out of control while trying to maintain a facade that appears normal. At times, I think the film stretches his character pretty far, but the extreme emotional swings make sense and are used effectively to highlight the hypocrisy of a suburbia where everything must be maintained in order to appear normal. Barbara Rush as his wife Lou also comes out well in this film, convincing as a wife trying to do the right thing and sweeping the issues under the rug as best she can. In fact she's the strongest figure in the film and is an interesting contrast to Mason's portrayal of father/husband who is basically lost. Rebel Without a Cause also features a pathetic father figure where Jim Backus is the helpless, doting father to James Dean's character Jim. Backus' portrayal along with Mason's both suggest a disconnect between the needs of the family and what the fathers can provide. Barbara Rush is almost more of the "father figure" in Bigger Than Life, as she's the strong one who carries the family through, holding it up under impossible circumstances. My favorite scene in the film comes during a confrontation that Ed and Lou have at the dinner table right in front of their son, starting out arguing about milk and ending with hateful proclamations as Ed's addiction and psychosis take it's toll. It's one of those staggering moments where you realize the film is going deeper than you expected.

Nicholas Ray was one of the most challenging directors working in Hollywood during the 1950's, making a string of films that have a unique voice, vision and a striking sense of truth in the moment. During the last 15 minutes of the film, there is a massive roller-coaster ride of emotion and action, capped at the end by a tagged-on ending that actually doesn't feel right. One gets the sense though that the studio had a hand in the conclusion. Bigger Than Life might be Ray's best film, where performances, direction and script all come together to make it unforgettable, shocking, and surprisingly relevant today, as it presages what would become the normal revisionist outlook on family life in the 1950's and which would continue into future decades of film where dysfunctional families became the norm.