They Live By Night is the most tender of films noir. It opens with a dreamy shot of lovers kissing by firelight, while the words, "This boy ... and this girl ... were never properly introduced to the world we live in" fade up on the screen. Keechie and Bowie share a sensitivity that transcends their miserable backgrounds. He's been in prison since childhood and she's turned cold and hostile to avoid further abuse from her drunken father. When Bowie returns from a robbery with a gift, we can see Keechie's heart melt. From then on they're like mated animals. Keechie's father is quick to inform on the lovers. The bull-like T-Dub and the hotheaded Chickamaw use threats to force Bowie into more bank robberies.

Ray concentrates on the couple's growing relationship. Keechie and Bowie gratefully accept whatever happiness they can find. Whenever they let down their guard and behave like 'real people', things go wrong. Bowie foolishly flashes his bankroll in front of strangers. A crooked marriage parlor operator (Ian Wolfe) can tell immediately that they're fugitives. The idea of 'honor among thieves' is revealed as a myth when crooks grossly overcharge them, and friends betray them to the police. Their situation is summed up by nightclub singer Marie Bryant's evocative delivery of Your Red Wagon, a creepy jazz tune that insists that one's problems are one's own, and it's no good expecting others to sympathize. Nicholas Ray's fine direction is just what Farley Granger needed -- he was never this good again, not even in his movies for Alfred Hitchcock. The much more natural performer Cathy O'Donnell is simply magnificent.

They Live By Night conjures powerful and memorable images, from its innovative helicopter shots to cameraman George Diskant's unusual character compositions. The lovers' happy faces fill the screen as they dream of the future, until the one-eyed Chickamaw shows up to demonstrate his menace by crushing Christmas ornaments. Not every scene happens at night, but those that do evoke the false sense of security when driving in a car, and the loneliness of being set adrift in a hostile world.

They Live By Night is the second of a string of very good rural bandit - amour fou movies roughly based on the Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow story. Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once is good cinema but forced in almost every respect. Joseph H. Lewis' Gun Crazy has a different blend of violence and out-of-control sexuality, and Robert Altman's Thieves Like Us has its good points as well. Arthur Penn's Bonnie & Clyde is a masterpiece in its own right but openly borrows from Nick Ray. The banker that leaps onto Clyde's running board and is shot in the face is clearly meant to one-up the They Live By Night moment when Bowie shoves the nice jeweler from his car window. A big part of our concern for Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty is the edgy knowledge that their demise will be bloody and graphic. At the end of They Live By Night, we wish we could throw ourselves in front of the police to shield the Romeo & Juliet-like Granger and O'Donnell.

The conclusion is as complex as noir films get, a beautiful distillation of the trauma of criminal life. The hard-faced Mattie betrays Keechie and Bowie in a pitiful bid to free her own husband from prison. The finale is somewhat idealized, but the Madonna-like grace afforded Keechie is emotionally very moving. I've never seen a showing of They Live By Night where people didn't applaud -- even back in college screenings.

The print of They Live By Night is nearly flawless, completely overshadowing the old Image laserdisc from the early 1990s. The nights are inky black and the image has very little grain. The interesting soundtrack highlights the music of Leigh Harline, and we're told that themes by Woody Guthrie can be heard as well.

A fast-paced featurette by Sparkhill, The Twisted Road has on-camera contributions from Molly Haskell, James Ursini, Alain Silver, Oliver Stone, Christopher Coppola and star Farley Granger. Granger returns with Eddie Muller in a feature commentary. The gracious actor is good with generalities but remembers few specific details, and many of Muller's patient questions receive four-word non-answers. Muller gives a fine account of the making of the film. We might assume that the helicopter footage indicates a Howard Hughes influence -- Hughes injected aviation into films whenever he could -- but They Live By Night was produced before Hughes came to the studio..

MGM made noir films but not a lot of great ones, perhaps because the studio's commitment to glamour worked against the noir ethos. Things changed a bit when Dore Schary imported Anthony Mann and John Alton from Eagle-Lion. The director and cameraman made an excellent team on Border Incident, but Alton may already have been working on An American in Paris by the time Side Street came around. Veteran Joseph Ruttenberg's camerawork is just as interesting.

Side Street is a derivative tale sparked by some fancy location shooting, particularly an exciting car chase in the narrow streets of Lower Manhattan. An opening narration imitates Jules Dassin's The Naked City, describing the daily cycle in New York while criminals are doing their dirty work. As if conceived as an elongated version of a moralizing Crime Doesn't Pay short subject, our hero is an innocent dupe who makes one foolish decision and becomes the target of ruthless killers.