Poetry Noir Exploring universal moments in black-and-white films with poetry.
Challenge Film Poems Support Contact

 

CHALLENGE #5

They Live By Night
Directed by Nicholas Ray
1948 - United States - 95 min

Summary:
"This boy...and this girl...were never properly introduced to the world we live in." With this superimposed opening title, director Nicholas Ray inaugurates his first feature, They Live by Night. Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell play a "Bonnie and Clyde"-type fugitive couple, who in trying to escape their past are hell-bent down the road to Doom. Despite their criminal activities, Bowie and Keechie are hopelessly naive, fabricating their own idyllic dream world as the authorities close in. The entrapment -- both actual and symbolic -- of the young misfit couple can now be seen as a precursor to the dilemma facing James Dean in Ray's 1955 film Rebel Without a Cause. This was the first film version of Edward Anderson's Depression-era novel Thieves Like Us (adapted again a quarter-century later by Robert Altman). It is one of the most delicate and heartbreaking noirs ever made.

 

POEMS FROM THIS CHALLENGE:


THEY LIVE BY NIGHT
By Warren Longmire

I once ate whole throatfuls of ice cream
and you are the closest
I've come to a sunset since.
This is a cold place, sure sweetie and
countertops back when weren't always slate-covered but
This is some kismet kind of velvet sheet we are wrapped in and
I see red lights worth running every time you breathe yes.
There's a boutique of green in our pockets.
No nightstick can stand to that slick little bop in your stride.
I still remember jumping into water like glass.
Close your lids and I swear I fade night right along with you so yes baby.
Anything this dark must be chocolate.
I'll turn at the next right and tell me what key to lock into place.
There is no one living like this in the county.
Let's point this story towards anything that makes you say I do.

comment


 

 

 

 

Poetry Noir on twitter

Poetry Noir is presented by the Montgomery County Poet Laureate Program
Website by A2P Web Design