David Hast: Scott, have you seen They Live by Night?
Scott Vander Werf: I have not seen They Live by Night.
DH: I'll talk about it, because it's a wonderful, wonderful movie, but we're also, we're talking today in general about this subgenre of crime movies, movies about lovers on the run.
SVW: And I've actually seen a lot of lovers on the run movies. I just have not seen They Live by Night, which was from 1948, and this was Nicholas Ray's first film, you told me.
DH: Yes, the great Nicholas Ray, who's best known for his most famous movie is Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean. But this was his first movie.
SVW: And, you know, growing up watching movies, the obvious number one choice in my mind, if someone said lovers on the run, I would think of Bonnie and Clyde.
DH: Definitely an important movie in that genre. But much, much later. Right? 1948 is this one of Alfred Hitchcock's last British films. Actually, it wasn't one of his last, one of his middle British films, The 39 Steps, right? The couple that are handcuffed together, although they hate each other. They fall in love over the course of the movie, but they're not technically lovers on the run at first. And what are some other ones? A lot of the movies in this genre, sub-genre, are film noir, so movies like Gun Crazy.
SVW: And Gun Crazy was one of my favorite movies back when I first saw it back in the 1980s, and that's from 1950.
DH: Classic B-movie film noir.
SVW: And it's also an example of lovers on the run, and one of them is psychotic.
DH: Right, which we're probably gonna talk about Badlands later on, right? The Terrence Malick's first film from 1973 with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek, and he's definitely psychotic in that one.
SVW: Yeah, and I've seen that film many times. Love Terrence Malick and I love that particular movie.
DH: Yeah, often what you have is its lovers on the run. But it might be one of them kind of dragging the other one into their criminal life, right?
SVW: And then there's uh Thelma and Louise which is kind of a different twist on it because it's two friends They're not really technically lovers,
DH: Right, but they end up killing someone in defending what Louise defends Thelma, and then they have to go on the run because they've killed someone.
SVW: So, is They Live by Night, is that, to your mind, is that the best of the Lovers on the Run movies?
DH: It's one of Hollywood's great love stories. It is a movie that raised great talent and insight, starting with this movie, and of course in Rebel Without a Cause and many others, was he told these tender and tragic stories about outsiders. Sensitive, damaged people who didn't really couldn't fit into the world and they're struggling to survive in this cold, heartless world and really they live by night is a perfect example. It stars two actors that aren't definitely in our household names anymore, Farley Granger as Bowie and Kathy O'Donnell as Keechie. They were in their early 20s, both of them at the time the movie was made. It was the first significant role for either one. And interestingly, many people would say it was the best role for either one of them, even though certainly Farley Granger had a big career.
The story begins with three criminals who, three men, three criminals who've just broken out of prison, they're driving in a car, they're on the run. And two of them, Chickama and T-Dub, are hardened criminals, right? They're older men, grown men. But the young man who's with them, Bowie, is really quite innocent, and we find out as the movie goes along that he's been in jail since he was 15 for what seems to have been an accidental killing. He's not a murderer. They hide out at the Chickama's brother's farmhouse and there Bowie meets his brother's teenage daughter, Keechie, and they fall in love. And What happens is the two criminals keep forcing Bowie to participate in robberies, including one where Chickama shoots a police officer, so he and Keechie just run away. And they get married at this little $20 to get wedded, drive-through chapel kind of place. And there's a huge manhunt for Bowie because the authorities have wrongly identified him as the leader of the gang. So Bowie and Keechie are lovers on the run.
They're young newlyweds and they have to stay on the road, travel at night, hole up in rental cabins and hotels and you know it's not going to end well. Right? I mean this is a movie in 1948, the production code, I mean Bowie is a criminal, right? He's involved in these bank robberies. He's going to have to be punished for it. You know something's going to happen. But what's so amazing about it, what makes this movie, you know, beloved by many people is that in a way it doesn't matter, and in a way, it's oddly optimistic because it's about this remarkable transcendent love.
I mean, it's been called a film noir, Romeo and Juliet, because they're innocent, they're devoted to each other. They've never really experienced the world, but now they feel like they have all they need as long as they're together. And so it's not actually, even though they're doomed, at least he is, It's not weighed down by this kind of pessimism and cynicism that you find in film noir typically. The main characters, they're not greedy or cynical. Keechi is the farthest thing in the world from a femme fatale. I mean, that's just not there. And it's shot with lots and lots of close-ups of the two of them, which is really beautiful. I mean, it's just about these two characters kind of trying to make their way through a world that they can't fit into.
SVW: Now the only Nicholas Ray film I have seen is Rebel Without a Cause with James Dean and Natalie Wood and that movie just, it feels like the vibe I always get from that movie is like no other film of the time and is it similar with, They Live by Night?
DH: Very much so. I think that's Nicholas Ray. I mean when he makes a film about lovers on the run it's just not like others. When he makes a film about teenagers I mean he revolutionized the way Hollywood looked at teenagers with that movie. Have you seen In a Lonely Place?
SVW: No. Is that another Ray film?
DH: That's a Ray film where Humphrey Bogart plays a reporter who's and Gloria Graham is the woman who lives across the way from him in this apartment complex. And there's been a murder. And the question is, did he commit it or not? But again, it's a movie about lonely, isolated people who somehow find each other and find a way in the world.
SVW: Badlands Terrence Malick with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek. That's a film that's also burned on my brain. It's loosely based on the Charles Stark weather and Carol Ann Fugate murders in 1958. They murdered 11 people in 1958 and, but then Terrence Malick takes that story fictionalizes it and he turns it into kind of a fairy tale.
DH: Yeah, I mean Terrence Malick is someone you can mention alongside someone like Nicholas Ray or Stanley Kubrick or something just filmmaker unlike any other. And certainly in Badlands, which launched the careers of Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen. Sheen had been a TV actor, but this was his first real, his first leading movie role and Sissy Spacek was a very young actress. They're great. Their characters Kit and Holly are completely different than Bowie and Keechie. I think they're more typical for this lovers on the run criminal type movie. Kit is a hardcore criminal. He's a sociopath. First he kills Holly's father, which only seems to bother her a little bit. That's the weird part of her character. And then he sets out on this murder spree across South Dakota, just killing people arbitrarily almost. And Holly comes along for the ride. She's very young, right? In the movie, I think she's 15, and he's like 20 or something. What was true in that real and the true story is based on too. But she doesn't really show any empathy for these murder victims either, right?
SVW: No, it's like they're walking through this magical world and yet they're committing all this ugly violence.
DH: Right, and then that is maybe the part that sets this movie apart in so many ways because what's weird is that the longer the movie goes on, with all these shots that these, incredible shots, that Malek is showing of the Great Plains and of close-ups of nature and everything, you start to see them being sort of dwarfed by, they're almost irrelevant to what's going on in the world. And then he also gets us to question our morality because the Kit character is kind of James Dean-like and like are we being seduced by his mannerisms and his energy? The guy’s killing people, but you're oddly rooting for him.
SVW: And also it's a non-nostalgia film too in terms of setting it in the 50s, it was made in the 70s, and Malek said in an interview that he didn't want to draw any sort of nostalgia from the audience in this movie. He wanted it to be, to stand on its own, like in its own universe.
DH: And it's like that. That's where it has something in common with, they live by night even though they're completely different kinds of characters, but it's like these two characters in their own universe within our world.
SVW: All right, lovers on the run movies. I'm definitely going to have to check out They Live by Night.
DH: Yes, you should.
SVW: And thanks for joining us.
DH: Thank you.
