What 1948 film directed by Nicholas Ray follows a fugitive couple on the run?

The 1948 Nicholas Ray film about a fugitive couple on the run is They Live by Night. It was Ray’s directorial debut and stars Farley Granger and Cathy O’Donnell as young lovers trying to build a life while escaping the law.

The film was adapted from Edward Anderson’s Depression-era novel Thieves Like Us. Granger plays Bowie, a young man who escapes prison with two older criminals. After meeting Keechie, played by O’Donnell, he falls in love and briefly imagines that ordinary domestic life might be possible.

Ray gives the story a romantic and emotionally intimate focus, while retaining the fatalism associated with film noir. The couple’s desire for freedom is repeatedly undermined by crime, poverty, public suspicion, and the older criminal world surrounding them. The result is both a crime film and a tragic love story.

The release history can cause confusion: although the film is generally identified as a 1948 production, it opened in London under the title The Twisted Road in August 1948 and reached U.S. theaters in November 1949. It is also sometimes confused with Gun Crazy, another lovers-on-the-run noir.