They Drive By Night

Director Raoul Walsh

Humphrey Bogart

Ann Sheridan and George Raft

Ida Lupino

The line stretches around the block

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT                    B                                                                                USA  (95 mi)  1940 d:  Raoul Walsh

In the best films of Raoul Walsh, you can see the way he can put people into action . . .             where they don’t act but move and express, indirectly, subconsciously, their experience of life.                        What makes something happen?                                                                                                    The placement of the camera                                                                                                        The angle                                                                                                                                        The lens.                                                                                                                                        The distance of the camera from the scene.                                                                                The physical execution.

—Pierre Rissient, written lead-in inscription of Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood's Legendary Director (494 pages), by Marilyn Ann Moss, 2011

Despite being one of Warner Brothers most popular films of the early 40’s, it’s notable for Humphrey Bogart getting 4th billing, the last time that would happen, as he would go on to become the most popular Hollywood star not only of the 40’s, but by the end of the century the American Film Institute will vote him the greatest male movie star of all time (AFI's 100 YEARS…100 STARS | American Film Institute).  For that reason alone this film is a curiosity, also notable for being the first film made about the trucking business, viewed through a working class lens, a product of the hardships of the Depression, with wildcat truckers working for corrupt bosses that would cheat them out of wages and exploit their services, causing them to take enormous chances on the road, all suffering from sleep deprivation, barely ever setting foot in their own homes, constantly hauling produce up and down the coast of California, basically shifting a railroad economy to the highway, where farmers suffering foreclosures took to the road hauling the produce they once grew, one of the few viable alternatives for income.  Largely based upon the first novel of A. I. Bezzerides entitled The Long Haul in 1938, Bezzerides is perhaps best known for writing Jules Dassin’s THIEVES HIGHWAY (1949) and Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955), while also co-writing Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground (1952) and William Wellman’s TRACK OF THE CAT (1954).  This story is based upon his own experience growing up as a truck driver in California’s San Joaquin Valley, transporting fruit from grower to seller, going to the market to buy produce, where haggling over prices was routine, often victimized by packing houses blatantly undermining their prices, sowing the seeds of dissension among the ranks while painting an acute portrait of the cutthroat tactics of capitalism, becoming an uncondescending and largely unsentimental view of the working class.  The camaraderie between the truckers is firmly established, each trying to make a meager living, sharing work experiences, all in the same boat, all equally exploited (“always honest and always broke”), recognizing familiar faces, meeting at various roadside diners, scrupulously avoiding the loan sharks trying to repossess their trucks for a single missed payment, each having the same dream of one day owning their own truck and going independent.  While certainly the model for later trucker films like Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la Peur) (1953), this elusive, underlying theme of freedom on the road is part of the American landscape, most notably Jack Kerouac’s generation defining 1957 novel On the Road, perhaps most prominently expressed in counterculture youth pictures like Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider (1969), Bob Rafelson’s Five Easy Pieces (1970), and Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), where freedom is always viewed as something undefinable that lies just over the horizon and is not easily attainable.  While those films ushered in an era of existential anti-heroes, Raoul Walsh retains the traditional format of heroic protagonist pursuing the American Dream, who in this film is George Raft as Joe, one of the two Fabrini brothers, the other being Paul (Humphrey Bogart), almost always on the road together with one driving while the other sleeps. 

Joe is the steadier of the two, the one with vision and a business acumen, living by his own credo “We’re tougher than any truck ever come off any assembly line,” while Paul incessantly complains about never being able to spend time with his wife Pearl (Gale Page), who in turn worries about him never being at home, gone for days on end, wishing he’d find a more conventional job where he’d come home every night.  While Paul may also want the same thing, he’s not going to leave his brother to fend for himself, particularly when there’s a chance they could get out from under their debt and actually start to make real money.  Early in the film the brothers suffer a mishap when some idiot ahead has veered into their lane, causing them to skid off the road, breaking a wheel.  Calling their boss from a nearby diner, asking him to wire money for repairs, the boss has other ideas, sending another driver to pick up their load, leaving the brothers stranded.  In the diner, however, they run into Cassie Hartley (Ann Sheridan) behind the counter, who is fending off men’s hands and leers and objectionable comments with apparent ease, a continuing example of the 30’s screwball comedy where a neverending stream of one-liners establishes the brisk pace of the film, while also introducing a complement of familiar truckers, including the overly friendly Irish (Roscoe Karns) and the sleep deprived McNamara (John Litel), a bit grumpy, ill at ease, as he’s obviously overworked, filling himself with coffee to no effect.  Joe is impressed by the way Cassie handles herself, taking a liking to her right away, but to her, he’s just another man to fend off.  After fixing their wheel, disgruntled that their load has been stolen from them by their own boss, they head back to San Francisco to settle the score, basically manhandling their boss for unpaid wages before heading to Los Angeles with another load, picking up a hitchhiker in the rain, none other than Cassie, whose own boss couldn’t keep his hands off her, so they all head to Los Angeles in seek of a brighter future, stopping at another familiar roadside diner where truckers seem to congregate.  In a driving rain, the brothers notice a familiar truck in front of them veering all over the road, McNamara, concluding he’s asleep at the wheel, trying to pull around to wake him up, but the truck crashes around a turn, tumbling down a steep embankment, eventually erupting in flames, killing both drivers inside.  Devastated by what they see, Paul is dropped off with his wife while the other two find a room together in LA, the beginning signs of a budding relationship, with Joe getting into a scrap with another driver, which impresses Ed Carlsen (Alan Hale), a longtime friend, whose wife Lana (Ida Lupino) takes more than a casual interest in Joe, suggesting they have history together, but Joe deflects her interest, steered into a lucrative load by Ed, picking his brother up along the way, making a handsome profit, even enough money to pay off the loan shark, finally starting to establish themselves.  But on the return trip Paul falls asleep at the wheel, losing an arm in the crash (sequence shot by Don Siegel), but their uninsured rig is totaled.  At the hospital, Pearl strangely finds the accident fortunate, as it will finally keep her husband at home, thinking it’s a small price to pay. 

Paul grows bitter at being treated as a charity case, yet Joe provides for all his needs, given a new job opportunity by Ed, who initially wanted to hire him as a driver, but his conniving wife convinces him he needs to hire him as a garage manager, selfishly allowing her more time with him, a decision with drastic consequences.  Lana undermines their marriage at every turn, hating her husband’s drinking habits and his interest in sharing his success with the drivers, enjoying their camaraderie more than the ice-cold looks he gets from his wife, who is viewed as a social climber, marrying for money and the prestige it brings, showing no interest whatsoever in her husband, fawning over Joe every chance she gets.  As for Raft, his portrayal of Joe is a little too saintly, too nice of a guy, hardly representative of someone from Hell’s Kitchen who grew up in the school of hard knocks, friends with mobster Dutch Schultz and a driver for childhood friend Owney Madden, delivering bootleg liquor during Prohibition.  His character has few rough edges, overly cleaned up, where he’s just too squeaky clean.  When Ed gets inebriated at a party, Lana drives him home, concocting a plan to leave him in the garage all night with the engine running, deftly conveying the mood almost entirely through her eyes, showing a melodramatic sign of remorse for the police, who call it an accidental death.  Enlisting Joe as a partner, he’s initially suspicious, knowing her real motives, but it’s a great business opportunity if they can keep it strictly business.  Moving Paul into a dispatcher position, the business thrives beyond their wildest dreams, with Joe and Cassie finally having the money to get married, a decision that leaves Lana devastated, as if punched in the gut, suddenly seeing all her scheming plans flying out the window, so she returns to the police claiming Joe forced her into murdering her husband, that he forcefully overwhelmed her and intimidated her.  Ida Lupino turns her into one of the most vile and wretched characters to ever grace the screen, synonymous with the lies and betrayals of a murderous Lady Macbeth who could never wash the blood off her hands, consumed by guilt and plagued by madness (You know the saying – Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned), she delivers a ballsy, off-the-wall, tour de force performance with exploding fireworks everywhere, like a walking time bomb that could detonate anytime.  Her erratic behavior starts slowly but builds to a climactic courtroom scene where she grows hysterical, spewing utter nonsense, creating a courtroom climate of utter chaos.  Before they can regain their collective breaths, all charges are dropped, with Lana sent to the funny farm.  Borrowing heavily from Archie Mayo’s BORDERTOWN (1935), there are similar plot points that seem fused into this picture (recycling scripts is a Hollywood studio tradition), feeling overly contrived, where the spontaneous freshness in the early dialogue sequences is replaced by a grim, overwrought melodrama that leads to a conventional ending.  Surprisingly, it’s the women who exhibit a hard edge in this picture, driving the storyline into even darker territory, with the men resorting to more conventional Hollywood caricature.  It was the final picture featuring Raft as a headliner star, soon to be replaced by Bogart, literally, as Raft turned down roles made famous by Bogart in his very next picture, HIGH SIERRA (1941), working again with Raoul Walsh, then again in THE MALTESE FALCOLN (1941) and CASABLANCA (1942), astonishing opportunities that made Bogart a star.  Raft even turned down the lead role in Billy Wilder’s fabulously successful Double Indemnity (1944), ushering in an era of film noir in American film.  Bogart’s success allowed Warners to let Raft walk away from his contract, but his career as a freelancer never blossomed. 

On Dangerous Ground

ON DANGEROUS GROUND         A-                                                                                    aka:  Dark Highway                                                                                                                    USA  (82 mi)  1952  d:  Nicholas Ray

Guy Maddin, transcribed from a 2009 introduction of the film at the IFC Center:                        Has there ever been a face—rugged and manfully handsome yet fragile with inner agonies promising to explode into volcanic rage—like Robert Ryan’s? Nick Ray harnesses the violent force of this face as Ryan pounds his beat, and every face on it, to Bernard Hermann’s greatest score. Ward Bond has never been more precipitous or more startling—his grief and stupidity as powerful and natural as a mountain cataract.

Actually filmed before his previous film FLYING LEATHERNECKS (1951), this feels like a natural extension of an earlier character, Humphrey Bogart’s Dix Steele at the end of In a Lonely Place (1950), an outsider with a penchant for violence who can’t conform to the rules of society, perhaps the template for John Ford’s Ethan Edwards (John Wayne) character in THE SEARCHERS (1956) or even Scorsese’s Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) character in Taxi Driver (1975).  While the arc of their lives is decidedly different, when we are introduced to all these characters, their propensity for violence is key to understanding their pent up, out of control inner rage, where these men are defined by the jagged edges of their soul, always irritable and dissatisfied, railing at the world around them, but usually it’s a personal disgust with themselves, how ineffectual they are at preventing the sick and twisted perverts of the world from ruining so many people’s lives.  The opening half hour of this film is textbook film noir, On Dangerous Ground -- (Movie Clip) Cop Killers YouTube (3:32), introducing Robert Ryan as a New York City cop Jim Wilson, a guy living alone in a depressingly tiny tenement apartment, who’s been on the force 11 years and seen it all, growing sick of continually dealing with the lowlifes and scum of the earth, “garbage, that’s all we handle,” always having to see the worst side of human nature, growing increasingly rough and physical when making arrests, perhaps crossing the line of police brutality, which he justifies by making the collar, but he’s turned into a loose cannon where his partners think he’s losing it and may crack under the pressure.  Nonetheless, he always starts out cool and collected before something drives him over the edge, as we see in two interrogation scenes here On Dangerous Ground (1952) - Video Dailymotion (5:42). 

Adapted by Ray and A.I. Bezzerides from Gerald Butler’s novel Mad With Much Heart, this is not as well known as other Ray films (though believed to be his favorite), partly because the release was delayed for a year while Howard Hughes tinkered with the editing, adding a new scene condemning police brutality, dropping a posse subplot in the snow, and adding a lushly romantic ending that Ray and film noir devotees disavowed.  By the time it was released, it followed William Wyler’s DETECTIVE STORY (1951), making this feel like a copycat movie.  Structurally, it’s also quite unique, as it breaks formula, starting out as a straight film noir, good cops doing the city’s dirty business but at a psychological price, but in the second half of the film they get out of the city into the snowy expanse of the mountain country, where it feels more like an Anthony Mann western that certainly had its influence on the Coen brother’s Fargo (1996).  Bezzerides’ novel Long Haul was used for Raoul Walsh’s They Drive By Night (1940), while also co-writing William Wellman’s TRACK OF THE CAT (1954) and Robert Aldrich’s Kiss Me Deadly (1955), all highly influential projects.  Bezzerides is actually seen early in the film as a corrupt bar owner attempting to bribe Ryan while he’s making the rounds attempting to collect information about a local cop killer on the loose.  When the police chief (Ed Begley) informs Wilson that the police force is being sued for his excessive use of brutality, the chief decides to send him upstate, to get him out into the country where he’ll have a new start and perhaps a fresh attitude.  Little did he know that’s exactly what happens, making this actually feel like two entirely different films.  Perhaps the film’s biggest influence is the outstanding Bernard Herrmann music, very pronounced from the opening credits, then all but disappears as the cops make their rounds in searing realism, before becoming perfectly integrated into the film again, where the Los Angeles Philharmonic plays a brief excerpt ON DANGEROUS GROUND (1951) - Death Hunt ... (2:26) and Herrmann himself can be heard in brief audio clips of highly demanding rehearsal sessions On Dangerous Ground - Scoring Outtakes - YouTube (2:21). 

As soon as Wilson arrives upstate and hears the particulars, we hear a young girl’s been killed, where her father, Ward Bond at his angry best, is on a vigilante rampage, shotgun in hand and ready to shoot at the first thing that looks like the killer.  Bond drives this second half with his near psychotic rage, which tempers Wilson, seeing himself in the old man, becoming a more restrained police investigator instead of utilizing the heavy handed brute techniques of vigilantism.  Interestingly, Bond was politically to the right of John Wayne and likely Attila the Hun, where he led the Red Scare witch hunt to publicly identify and castigate communists from under every rock in America, where here he plays someone very close to his real character, as much like Wayne’s Ethan Edwards, he’s driven to mercilessly track down and find the killer.  This psychological shift from one psychopath to another can be heard in Hermann’s remarkable score which pulsates with mad energy in wordless sequences as they follow the footprints in the snow, Bond leading at a brisk pace, stomping through the snow, rifle in hand, one following right behind the other until they come upon a cabin in an open meadow On Dangerous Ground -- (Movie Clip) Scared People  (4:13, followed by the trailer).  Entering carefully, they discover a quietly polite blind woman inside, Ida Lupino, playing against type, becoming the calming voice of a gentle woman who is largely dependent on others, due to her condition, changing the tone of the film from wrath to reason On Dangerous Ground : The Blind And The Cop ... (3:22).  But Bond is hell bent and will not be dissuaded until the killer is caught, where the struggle is as much Ryan against Bond as the two of them trying to find the killer.  An interior melancholic mood established through the quiet of a wintry night turns into a psychologically riveting chase scene during the light of day, as by morning, the escapee leads them on a hunt through an open expanse into the rocky cliffs nearby, very similar to the ending in Mann’s Winchester '73 (1950), where a tense struggle leads to an enduring tragedy, where a film noir turns into a film blanc due to the heavy cover of snow.  The music really makes this film, as there are rapidly changing moods that are only accentuated by the score, adding interior depth to what turns into a glorified depiction of fullblown romanticism by the end, as Wilson finally discovers his humanity, where the earlier violence and anger shifts to forgiveness and love, where the close-up image of the embrace of hands is a transcendent Bressonian moment.