Nicholas Ray

They Live by Night

They Live by Night

Legendary director Nicholas Ray began his career with this lyrical film noir, the first in a series of existential genre films overflowing with sympathy for America’s outcasts and underdogs. When the wide-eyed fugitive Bowie (Farley Granger), having broken out of prison with some bank robbers, meets the innocent Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell), each recognizes something in the other that no one else ever has. The young lovers envision a new, decent life together, but as they flee the cops and contend with Bowie’s fellow outlaws, who aren’t about to let him go straight, they realize there’s nowhere left to run. Ray brought an outsider’s sensibility honed in the theater to this debut, using revolutionary camera techniques and naturalistic performances to craft a profoundly romantic crime drama that paved the way for decades of lovers-on-the-run thrillers to come.

Film Info

  • United States
  • 1948
  • 95 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.37:1
  • English
  • Spine #880

Special Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Audio commentary featuring film historian Eddie Muller and actor Farley Granger
  • New video interview with film critic Imogen Sara Smith
  • Short piece from 2007 with film critic Molly Haskell, filmmakers Christopher Coppola and Oliver Stone, and film noir specialists Alain Silver and James Ursini
  • Illustrated audio interview excerpts from 1956 with producer John Houseman
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: A new essay by film scholar Bernard Eisenschitz

    New cover by Mark Chiarello

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Audio commentary featuring film historian Eddie Muller and actor Farley Granger
  • New video interview with film critic Imogen Sara Smith
  • Short piece from 2007 with film critic Molly Haskell, filmmakers Christopher Coppola and Oliver Stone, and film noir specialists Alain Silver and James Ursini
  • Illustrated audio interview excerpts from 1956 with producer John Houseman
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: A new essay by film scholar Bernard Eisenschitz

    New cover by Mark Chiarello
They Live by Night
Cast
Cathy O’Donnell
Keechie
Farley Granger
Bowie
Howard Da Silva
Chickamaw
Jay C. Flippen
T-Dub
Helen Craig
Mattie
Will Wright
Mobley
Credits
Director
Nicholas Ray
Produced by
John Houseman
Screenplay by
Charles Schnee
Adaptation by
Nicholas Ray
From the novel Thieves Like Us by
Edward Anderson
Director of photography
George E. Diskant
Film editor
Sherman Todd

Current

Nicholas Ray and the Myth of the Open Road
Nicholas Ray and the Myth of the Open Road

In his film debut, legendary director Nicholas Ray captured the mythic dimensions of the American open road through the story of an outlaw couple.

They Live by Night: Dream Journey
They Live by Night: Dream Journey

Informed by his work in theater and his travels through rural America, Nicholas Ray brought an outsider’s perspective to genre filmmaking in his debut feature.


By Bernard Eisenschitz

Owen Kline’s Top 10
Owen Kline’s Top 10

The director of Funny Pages gathers an eccentric list of favorite films, including classics by W. C. Fields, Robert Downey Sr., and Robert Montgomery.

Hotel Noir

Dark Passages

Hotel Noir

From the squalid to the generic, cheap hotels serve as a quintessential habitat for the lonely, transitory people in crime cinema.

By Imogen Sara Smith

A Birthday Tribute to Nicholas Ray
A Birthday Tribute to Nicholas Ray

On the anniversary of his birth, we’re celebrating Hollywood renegade Nicholas Ray with complete editions of three of his masterpieces on the Criterion Channel.