They Live by Night represented a start for a couple of people in the film industry, namely being the first leading role for Farley Granger, who had previously had minor roles in a couple of smaller wartime times (with this coming in the same year as his star-making performance in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope), as well as being the directorial debut for Nicholas Ray, who would go on to become one of the most celebrated filmmakers of his generation, someone who directed a number of the most iconic works to ever grace the silver screen, his career being one filled to the brim with incredible stories. Their adaptation of Thieves Like Us (written by Edward Anderson in a story that was adapted a few times before and since) is one of the more distinct curios of an era when film noir was at its peak. It tells the story of two people who meet each other by chance when they find themselves in close proximity to a gaggle of cutthroat criminals, only to discover that they are slowly falling in love with one another, which causes immense complications for their already challenging personal lives, forcing them to go on the run from not only the law, but the very people they thought were there to protect them. It’s not a work that can be considered anything close to major, but it is a decent effort that represents the beginning of a fascinating career – and many of Ray’s distinctive directorial flourishes have their roots here in a film that doesn’t utilize them to their full potential, but still features them in a way that clearly suggests the iconoclastic works that were still to come.

Much like similarly-themed films from around this time, like Frank Borzage’s Moonrise and Howard Hawks’ The Big Sleep, this film is propelled less by the story, and more by the general themes and atmosphere. They Live by Night is a film that requires the viewer to get on its wavelength, because taken purely on the virtue of its story, it doesn’t seem to be anything special. The “lovers on the run” genre has been seen and done so many times before, it has lost a lot of its impact – but what is often neglected is how this film essentially established it, proving how it is not impossible to blend a gritty crime story with romance without losing the impact brought on by either. It’s not a case of one invalidating the other, but rather that the perfect balance is rarely found – and while They Live by Night may not be the most precise or well-formed version of this story, it is certainly one of the most important in terms of pioneering it. Once the viewer is able to leap onto this side of the story and begin to understand exactly what it is that Ray is doing with the source material, the easier it is for us to surrender to its more peculiar charms, which become part of what makes the film such an enigmatic work of both crime fiction and romance, two genres that do not normally work together well, but manage to have enormous compatibility when produced with actual interest in using one to complement (rather than contradict) the other, which is one of the areas in which these films often falter, but which They Live by Night succeeds at developing almost wholeheartedly.

Part of the atmospheric appeal of this film comes in the form of the characters, since the story depends on the audience being able to make a meaningful connection with them, without finding them particularly relatable, which is a vital distinction that anchors the film. Farley Granger is not an actor we speak about very often, for the unfortunate reason that he struggled to make a meaningful career as a leading man – he had the talents and the appearance, but he was always secondary to his peers, rarely being able to break out of genre work – and even in those where he was a lead, he was often just a reactionary to the more eccentric co-leads (consider how he was essentially playing the moral adversary to the more complex characters played by John Dall in Rope and Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train). As his first major performance, They Live by Night brings Granger into the spotlight, pairing him with Cathy O’Donnell as the star-crossed lovers trying to make their way out of a bad situation. They’re a terrific pair, and they carry the film almost entirely on their own. However, the people that really make this film captivating are the supporting cast Howard da Silva and Jay C. Flippen are intimidating villains, while Helen Craig has a small but pivotal role as the enigmatic character who sets off the thrilling climax. The film does have its inherent flaws, and some of these characters can be quite vague, but this only adds to the peculiar tone that underpins the film and makes it such a thrillingly layered work.

Despite being very clearly structured as a crime film, what makes They Live by Night so intriguing is how this is essentially not only a film about two lovers on the run, but also a story of America at a very particular point in history. It’s hardly a mistake that many discussions on the source novel and its various adaptations over the years point towards how it was written during the Great Depression, with this era of bleak economic development being one that spurred many hard-hitting works that explored the desperation of ordinary folk. Ray constantly demonstrated a complex relationship with his country, nearly all of his films focusing on the flaws inherent to the supposedly idyllic nation that was seeming without flaws, with any deviants being swept into the background. Like many of his works, They Live by Night sees Ray focusing on the individuals that occur at the margins, the people who may be morally reprehensible, but certainly warrant just as much time in exploring what drove them to that particular point in their lives. It helps that this film doesn’t focus on people who are inherently evil, but rather found themselves in situations where guilt seemed like the most logical reasoning for their actions – the main characters in this story are mostly innocent, their only crime being retreating from a legal system that was never there to protect people like them in the first place. They Live by Night lends itself to a lot of discussion and debate, with every interpretation being varied and valid, all adding to the mystique that surrounds this peculiar film.

They Live by Night is not a film that will necessarily redefine the genre in which it was made, and for those who aren’t normally aligned with proto-noir or crime thrillers in general, this is going to be something of a bewildering experience, especially since nothing really happens throughout the duration of the film. The action is minimal and kept mainly in the background, with the most prominent elements of the film being its strange atmosphere, which conceals some deep and deceptive secrets that create an unnerving but fascinating story of romance set to the backdrop of the Great Depression. Perhaps the film doesn’t explore its more intriguing social and cultural origins as much as it should have, but this doesn’t invalidate the more traditional aspects that make this such a thrilling and enticing film. By all accounts, They Live by Night is a relatively minor work, and one that will appeal mostly to those who have an existing relationship with these kinds of films – but as a highly-influential work of crime fiction, the film is a worthy endeavour, and one that remains one of the more noteworthy attempts at situating a story at the perfect intersection between romance and thriller, which leads to a tremendously captivating, and often deeply unsettling, voyage into the criminal mind.