THEY LIVE BY NIGHT
1948 | Nicholas Ray
by Julia Scrive-Loyer
“The only thing black about you are your eyelashes”
When I think of Keechie and Bowie, I immediately think of the poem by Salinas that says “meeting is like thunder”. Love between these two characters is brutal and inevitable and has both everything and nothing to do with their past.
Keechie, not very “feminine” (whatever that means nowadays) at the beginning of the movie, seems to have never felt like a woman before. Bowie, who just escaped from jail where he has been locked up for most of his teenage years, seems to have never allowed himself to feel loved. But these two elements are secondary to the characters, who try to see what’s lovable in each other. The chemistry between Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell is delicious. They’re clumsy, they’re tender, but they’re also naif and damned. They both drive willingly towards a world that isn’t as merciful as them.
“Keechie, what time is it?”
Keechie and Bowie are both marginalized, each in their own way. Bowie has been in jail and Keechie has been too, in a sense. She’s grown up alone in the middle of nowhere with her alcoholic father. Keechie didn’t grow up with the freedom to explore the world, nor to at least explore herself. That’s why she decides so quickly to run away with Bowie.
From the beginning of the movie, we see them set aside from every important decision. The adults make plans in the kitchen while they dream in the garage. The situations come to them when they’re already inevitable. Robbing a bank, then another, then they better leave town. Meanwhile, Keechie and Bowie dream in places that are in a sense “nowhere places”: the highway, the night, a cabin in the middle of nowhere. They dream of going to the movies, of giving each other gifts, of living the life “out there” in plain daylight. But it’s better to hide away in a time that doesn’t exist, a time they’re the only ones to share, in their clocks that seem to give them back the time they want to hear. Like two kids, they play make-believe, they play in a world they aren’t ready for.
The other characters that orbit around them are misfits too. The two partners Bowie had in jail are incapable of leaving the vicious circle of crime. Keechie’s father is unable to walk away from alcohol. Mattie is probably the only character that achieves her goal with determination, but is still somehow “punished”.
“A heart can only take so much”
Because of this maladjustment, the characters of the movie are tragic from the start. In this aspect, the movie doesn’t seem so much like a thriller and is closer to a melodrama, or even a tragedy. Mattie tells Keechie from the beginning that Bowie will never stop being “jailbait”. She makes it very clear that having been in jail locks you up for life, even when you think you’re free. Mattie knows what she’s talking about; her husband is in jail, but ironically, she’s doing everything she can to get him out. Oh well, love is blind.
It would seem that the characters are forever confined in the tale of the frog and the scorpion. But there’s a fine line between what makes them be one or the other. In the end, they all seem to be part frog, part scorpion. They all want to save themselves, but none of them can escape their nature, their past, the cruelty that surrounds them. The vicious circles surround the characters, but only because it isn’t convenient for society to believe in change.
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