Dear Noir Fans, They Live by Night is not a thrilling noir by any sense of the imagination. More of a tragic drama with a few noirish characters and elements. There are a couple of token noirish characters - an alcoholic gangster and the femme fatale sister of a jailed man who betrays the hero in the end. They serve more as distractions than anything else. The film does not even have a proper heist scene. It is sort of a road movie I guess. But it is mostly about the intense relationship between a young jailbird and a young woman. Both of them orphans. It is a very realistic depiction of the life of two people on the run. Godard was a big fan of Nicholas Ray. He might have been inspired by this film when he made Pierre Le Fou which was a lot more depressing than this. Both Farley Granger and Cathy O Donnel are very intense and melancholic. It is not the sort of noir film that I would want to watch. I mean, it is interesting. But I like my noir films to be thrilling even if it ends in a tragedy. This is the opposite of that. Best Regards, Pimpin. (7/10)

There is no 'movie' as wonderful and nuanced as the perception we bring to our own life, though a lot of the time this cornucopia of senses is an indifferent and presupposed given, ungratefully and unwondrously seen. So we seek diversion and spectacle, most of which really dulls by the same degree that we were already dulled to seek the escape. But there are movies, like moments in life, that awaken some of that wondrous sense, in which we are real people again, alert and fully in our presence.I'm not waxing here, it's what the movie is about. It is about people, bank robbers on the run, who want the escape. Like a mantra, the characters repeat that they want to be 'real people', a transcendent drive. For the older two, dulled by life, the pursuit translates to one as simple practicality, money, to the other as the desire for thrills and diversion, the making of headlines whereby 'real' is the better than ordinary. For the betraying woman, it means getting her husband out of prison so she can be alive again instead of merely biding time.But for the young couple, which is the fulcrum of the film, it comes to mean real in each other's eyes, realized by truth and commitment to love. Great. Oh we see that the boy's clinging to the notion that love should be expressed with things to buy and a good time is a false escape, and that newspapers and in the end the cop continue to circulate a false image(the boy as killer) all to solidify the floating world. But I was amazed here by just the sincere spark between the lovers.The crime spree is merely the diversion here, the newspaper wrap. What's so wonderful is the heartfelt ordinariness, given the Hollywood trappings. Neither of the two protagonists is a seductive movie star, they are green, raw and overly eager in a larger world, as are their characters. And I value a presence like this as much as the most submerged Method, for me it steals into and reveals that presupposed life before any affected stance.The film captures only certain aspects of noir, it is not shot in the style for one. The most revealing thing is that the girl is not 'in' the crime story, not an accomplice like Bonnie to Clyde but a haven, a conscience. But the main engine remains noirish: an inexplicable black hole in life, the killing of a man 7 years ago, which can't be made right and devours the light. The karmic upsurge of previous life, the (similarly arbitrary) killing of the father, the breakup of home by parents who ran away with lovers, which rises again in our couple.Overall, it's not so much a noir as one of the great melodramatic love movies of the time. The trail goes from here to Gun Crazy to Breathless, which brings a 'real' camera to stress the affected stance, to the marvelous Zen of the Breathless remake with Gere and Kaprisky.Noir Meter: 2/4

The excellent side Characters in this overly romantic Film-Noir are more interesting than the two love-struck leads. So is the dark atmosphere and incredible look of the Movie. Where it falters is the extreme naiveté of the Couple that becomes a bit irritating. "I don't know how to kiss, you'll have to show me".A farm Girl uttering such silly nonsense is just not wholly believable even in the Forties. They are both portrayed as such innocents that it is really too much. But if you can forgive some of the more whispering Romance scenes there is enough here to recommend as a Film-Noir with more Romantic notions than most.It can be quite engaging at times but is bogged down again and again by more school-kids playing house kind of stuff. Fortunately their Dream Life is interrupted just in time before it becomes unbearable. The world of Film-Noir is penetrated here with idealism and hope, but there is just no way that any of that will do in this perpetually bleak place. In the end, they both come to that realization.

To see this masterpiece for the first time last night on the big screen at the Film Forum. (Well, as big as the screens get at that theater.) And after the film concluded, the film programmer, Bruce Goldstein, delivered a wonderful surprise to the audience: Farley Granger was in the house! Mr. Granger (looking very handsome) stood up and recalled how wonderful it was to work with Nicholas Ray on his directorial debut. He noted that Ray had been working in theater with Elia Kazan and implied that may have accounted for how skillful he was in directing actors. He also observed that, based on a few of his later films, he thought Ray had eventually gone "a little crazy," but that he was in his creative prime for this film. Boy, was he!