![]() ![]() Establishing the period is clearly more necessary in Altman’s film – made nearly four decades after the novel was published –than it was in Nick’s, made when memories of the ’30s would have been alive for many in the audience. Roosevelt, and one by one of his opponents, Father Coughlin, a neo-fascist priest with a regular radio programme). On the whole, however, Altman mainly uses broadcasts which evoke the feel and atmosphere of the 1930s: advertisements, thriller and drama series, and two political speeches (one by President Franklin D. Altman also has the radio intervene in the narrative: just before the car crash, a crucial incident in the plot, Bowie takes his eyes off the road as he leans forward to change the radio station away from a news report on Sea Biscuit. The one time Altman uses a news broadcast in this way, reporting T-Dub’s death and Chicamaw’s arrest, the radio’s reception breaks up. When Bowie (Farley Granger) returns to Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell) the radio has also informed her of the subsequent death of Chicamaw. In Nick’s film, they are the source of most of the music accompanying the action, but at the climax, they take on the role of narrator, describing the failure of the final bank raid – which is not shown –and then T-Dub’s death. Newspaper reports have a reduced role in both movies, but radio broadcasts are used to great effect. Nick turns this into a scene of great beauty, in which it becomes clear that Mattie’s husband is not going to forgive her for the betrayal, despite the fact that it obtains his release. This also indicates the deal Mattie has done with the authorities, betraying the lovers to secure the release of her husband from prison. ![]() The novel’s account of their death is not directly narrated, but described in a newspaper report, one of several Anderson uses to advance the story, or in this case end it. In Anderson’s novel, both central protagonists, the young lovers Keechie and Bowie, are killed in a police ambush, like their real-life counterparts Bonnie and Clyde earlier in the 1930s. Even Joan Crawford – according to Gavin Lambert, Nick described her “as one of the worst human beings he’d ever encountered” (6) – fared much better in his conversations with me! Never, when talking about They Live by Night, or a project in which Houseman tried to interest him early in pre-production, Two Weeks in Another Town (directed by Vincente Minnelli in 1962), did he refer to Schnee by name, or say anything which suggested he found merit in the work he had done. Nick did tell me that, whenever he was uncertain, or felt in trouble during production, he went back to his original treatment. This suggests it was the result of the involvement of Charles Schnee, brought in by Houseman to “transfer” Nick’s original treatment “into a screenplay”, which could be used to estimate budget, and presumably provide a basis for scheduling (5). Though I failed to clarify the status of this document, I certainly remember it as a screenplay, not a treatment. So too, however, does the screenplay Ray (hereafter Nick) gave me to read over forty years ago. Houseman concluded: “the whole feeling about it, as you can tell from comparing it with Altman’s picture … that was Nick talking” (3).Īltman’s adaptation certainly seems much closer to Edward Anderson’s original novel (4). From the first instant of shooting, Nick Ray emerged as an autonomous creator with a style and work patterns that were entirely and fiercely his own. Until then, though I had complete faith in his taste and talent and frequently accepted his judgements, Nick had functioned as my assistant. I realized that our association had undergone a subtle but drastic change…. Nevertheless, he was close enough to the project to write, on the first day of shooting: This was staged at the Coronet Theater in Hollywood, at which Houseman and colleagues were inaugurating a new series of productions. ![]() However, during shooting he was immersed in the first English-language production of Brecht’s Life of Galileo, with Charles Laughton, and directed by Joseph Losey. John Houseman, credited as producer on They Live by Night, had been involved in the development of the project from the outset. I want to find out if film is for me, and if it’s not, I’ll go back to Broadway.” As a result of this experience, he “fell in love” with film (1). Everything that’s done here is going to be mine. When shooting started on They Live by Night, Nick Ray told his cameraman George Diskant: “Every mistake in this film is going to be mine. Hopefully, then, they will want to see the film again! Those who wish to avoid prior knowledge of the story, particularly its climax, should put off reading these notes till after seeing the film. ![]()
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