Nicholas Ray Blogathon: They Live By Night (1949)

by Tony Dayoub

I'm still amazed that They Live by Night is Nicholas Ray's directorial debut. It is an innovative and accomplished piece of work from a man whose previous film experience mainly consisted of assisting Elia Kazan on A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Of course, Ray had spent some time acting in the Group Theatre, roamed much of the U.S. while documenting folk music for the Library of Congress, worked in radio, and even directed a Broadway musical. So at 36, what he most contributed to They Live by Night was life experience. Perhaps this is why one feels that the movie's young couple on the run is doomed to failure: because Ray takes an almost nostalgic perspective in the way he approaches the story, as if recalling better times. Harsh at some points, yet gauzily expressionistic in others, They Live by Night is a romantic fever dream which, as the cliche goes, burns twice as bright if only half as long.

Farley Granger

by Tony Dayoub

Handsome and stiff-jawed, it was easy to mistake him for a traditional leading man at first glance. But a few minutes spent with him and a quiet uncertainty in his features would quickly give way to anxious desperation. That was why Farley Granger was often cast as someone with something to hide. Alfred Hitchcock took advantage of that in two of his films, so did Nicholas Ray, and Italy's Luchino Visconti. In Granger's best period, a short span of time from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, each director pushed the suave acting neophyte to subvert his angular features to the point where they seemed brittle, exposing a fragility which often told the viewer everything one needed to know about his character.

Blu-ray Review: Three Women on the Verge...

by Tony Dayoub

Three recent Criterion Blu-ray releases—two new to the label, one reissue—focus on female protagonists on the cusp of change. For one, a mature woman of some importance, this change shakes her most fundamental beliefs, allowing her a brief moment of happiness before ending with a gradual descent into madness. For another, it is the beginning of an attunement to her spiritual life, and her connection to another woman hundreds of miles away. And for the youngest woman, trying to make the best out of her dismal surroundings, any change can only be a positive one.