Director Nicholas Ray’s first film (from 1948) has been called the most auspicious debut in American movies since Citizen Kane. Based on the dynamite Depression-era gangster novel Thieves Like Us, They Live by Night begins with the daring prison break of three men: a 23-year-old killer named Bowie and the aged, hardened criminals Chicamaw and T-Dub. Unlike the source material, Ray focuses on Bowie, who’s been jailed since he was sixteen, and his tormented relationship with the teenage girl Keechie. Ray’s instinct for troubled youth may not have been better expressed — even though he did go on to direct Rebel Without a Cause. Here, he perfectly captures the dangers of that delicate age when a person is thrust from childhood into a world where love and violence are suddenly fraught with (often deadly) significance.
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