They Live by Night
Film Reviews
(Featuring Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell.) 96 min.
When the hero of this film tells his young wife “our baby will have to take a chance like us it is not a mere conventional statement such as one often hears in American pictures.
We have previously heard about conflict relating to Junior’s jealousies and whether two or three nurseries are necessary for a newly-poor family trying to adapt. But the unborn child of a mother with a sad early history, a father who has been to Prison for accidental killing and who consequently becomes delinquent, may not have a hopeful future. At any rate the acting of Cathy O’Donnell and Farley Granger make us believe in the sincerity of the love of these two unhappy people. Though some of the subtler conversation may be too Americanized for us to follow, we are presented with a vivid picture of two people fighting to give their child the love and security of which they were starved. This may all sound rather melodramatic but we cannot quarrel with a book, film or play that sincerely tries to depict the tragic series of events that may lead to serious anti-social behaviour. We know only too well the sad case histories that are uncovered in child guidance and delinquency clinics, Remand Homes, Approved Schools, Borstals and prisons.
All through this film the direction, acting, music and photography underline in a beautiful yet frightening way the events that close in like a net on the young delinquent. He still hopes to be law abiding, yet he is always having to run away from the long arm of the law.
The theme of the boy and girl who long for the right to be happy together after the deprivations of childhood is extremely moving. There is artistic and moral merit in their unfulfilment, but having seen the film, time could be well spent weaving a few fantasies over satisfactory though inartistic endings for naughty children both in films and in everyday life. H.V.B.
The Window. (Featuring Barbara Hale, Bobby Driscoll, Arthur Kennedy, Paul Stewart.) 73 min. It seemed as though the craze for schizophrenia had passed and with it perhaps the psychological film (for schizophrenia was almost becoming synonymous with psychology in the cinema world), but this week ” Obsession ” apparently continues the series. But whether films, whose central theme t?
is an abnormal condition of the mind, continue to attract audiences or not, it does seem as though they have had a permanent effect on films in general. Ten years ago one may guess that The Window would have been a simpler tale : Tommy would have seen his neighbours murder a man, have incurred their suspicions, and after a blood-curdling chase ending in the neighbours’ downfall, the film would have ended with Tommy carried shoulderhigh, the hero of the tenement building. That is still essentially the theme to-day, but there is a difference : it is important for the plot that when Tommy tells his parents of his horrifying discovery they shall not believe him, but their incredulity is more than a requirement of the plot?it is psychologically inevitable. Tommy is shown as a child living in a world of fantasy, shooting imaginary robbers, nearly losing his parents’ apartment for them by his tales of the far-off ranch to which they will shortly be moving, and regularly greeting his father on his return from work with an account of his heroic exploits of the day. All this is excellently done ; Tommy surpasses himself when he almost loses the apartment and the parents speak seriously to him about the result of his ” tales “. When this scene is immediately followed by his account of the murder he has just seen (this time in fact and not in fantasy), the audience knows that it is artistically impossible that Tommy should be believed, and the more he protests, the greater the incredulity. But to make a thriller that shall not only thrill, but shall present characters and motives so convincingly that each situation shall seem to be inevitable, is to present script writer and actors with a formidable task, and it cannot be said that The Window quite meets the challenge. Would Tommy’s excellent parents really have left him alone at night when he was so frightened ? Would such a terrified child have behaved with such remarkable self-possession when placed by the murderer on railings, high above the street, in the expectation that he would topple over ! Would people be able to carry on shady practices in a tenement building, without arousing the suspicions of their neighbours ? These improbabilities present themselves just because the greater part of the film is so good.
For the acting, no praise is too high. There is nothing pretentious, nothing ostentatious about the film. There are not even any stars, except the child, Bobby Driscoll. But words, actions, expressions hold the audience all the time. P.E.W.
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