Isn't it nice fantasizing that, sometimes, life can really run like in the Bowie/Keechie story? They just meet, fall in love each other and runaway together without hesitation; a few later, they accidentally see a chapel from the Greyhound bus stop and immediately get married at the low cost of 27 $, including the wedding ring and the tips for the best men: then their tragic life burns off very quickly, but... Isn't a similar perspective awfully alluring, somehow? The potency of this movie stays in summarizing the myth of the negative hero who fights to the bone, unsuccessfully trying to subvert his destiny in the name of love, that's a kind of 'evergreen' philosophy in making movies - a much better work by Nicholas Ray, I think, than the famous but fulsome "Rebel wirhout a cause".
Review of They Live by Night
