THEY LIVE BY NIGHT is film noir at its best. Edward Anderson's little-known hard-boiled rural bandit novel is made into a screenplay as lean as the post-war dreams of its players. The shifty camera frames every sucker that comes its way, making them false promises then plunging each into a darkness more than night. Rookie director Nicholas Ray mercilessly rolls rising stars Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell in the existential muck, but manages nonetheless to show us the ethereal gold that lines...
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