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MOVIE REVIEWS
Farley Granger, one of the jail-breaking trio in They Live By Night, discovers Cathy O'Donnell at their hideout.
After robbing a bank for funds to fight the life term he was unjustly serving, Farley, pledging a new life, weds Cathy.
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Trapped by circumstances and hunted by the police, he realizes there's no escape — and bids her a poignant farewel
THEY LIVE BY NIGHT
Cast: Cathy O'Donnell, Farley Granger, Howard Da Silva. Jay C. Flippen. RKO
Great is a word reserved chiefly for outsize movies. Big productions. The ones like Joan of Arc, with a thousand extras, the ones like Hamlet and Henry the Fifth, by William Shakespeare. But when Shakespeare's good, it's nothing you couldn't have expected of him. For me, it's the occasional picture that takes you unawares, the unballyhooed treasure you stumble over in the dark, that really puts the thrill into movie-going. They Live By Night is an example. It's the story of a boy and a girl who never had a chance, but whose love was a very remarkable thing, for all that. The boy, Bowie (Farley Granger), serving a life term in prison for an accidental killing, breaks jail with two older men, Chicamaw (Howard Da Silva) and T-Dub (Jay C. Flippen). The trio's planning a series of bank robberies (the boy wants his share of the money so he can get himself a lawyer and clear up the old murder case ). They hole up at a gas station run by Chicamaw's drunken brother, and the brother's daughter, a thin, neglected little girl called Keechie (Cathy O'Donnell). Neither Bowie nor Keechie has ever had any human affection; they're shy, lonely kids, strange with each other, yet clinging together. Keechie is frightened for Bowie. She knows he's playing with killers. He promises her everything will be all right. The first robbery's successful, Chicamaw, TDub and Bowie divide the money and split up,, to lie low for a while. Keechie and Bowie go away together, get married in a sordid open-all-night kind of wedding parlor, have a honeymoon at a tourist cabin. Bowie plans to get a lawyer, go straight, make a new life for himself and Keechie, but he knows too much about his two old partners, and they need him; he can't escape. Keechie's going to have a baby; Bowie goes to the man who'd married them, a man who'll do anything for money. "Fix it for us to get to Mexico," Bowie begs. The man can't help him. "Then there's no place we can go?" Bowie says. "No place for her and me?" And that's the answer. Bowie is betrayed to the police, and killed, finally, but you know he's lost, long before that. . . . The calibre of the acting in They Live By Night is enough to make your breath catch in your throat. Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell as the lovers who have to crowd their whole pitiful lives into a couple of enchanted weeks; Da Silva and Flippen as the two seasoned crooks — they're incredibly good, and so is everybody else, too. This is a picture so honest and real and unphony it's hard to find words that are simple and honest enough to describe it. Those big Technicolored adjectives — terrific, gigantic, stupendous — they just won't do.