They Drive By Night
At a glance...
- Directed by Raoul Walsh
- Released in 1940
- Runtime 93 minutes
- Watched at home
- Final feelings: I was intrigued.
"I like you. I like the way you fill out your clothes. I like everything about you. Are you glad you ran on to me?"
"Yes, you're a nice guy. But you've got to remember that nice guys always leave when ladies ask them to."
"That nice I ain't"
Not to write about a completely different movie for this review, but I am retroactively giving props to Fat Girl because there is a dynamic between Ann Sheridan and George Raft in this film that just gave me the willies after watching Fat Girl a few nights ago. As annoying and French as that movie is, one thing it does evoke incredibly well is the horror and fear and rapeyness of a man constantly pushing a woman (a girl, in that movie's case) for a little more and a little more.
Watching that gave new clarity to how gross the dynamic in this movie feels. A pivotal part of this film is the romance between Cassie Hartley, played by Ann Sheridan, and Joe Fabrini played by George Raft. In the part of the movie that is meant to introduce their romance to each other, Joe literally rents a hotel room for Cassie and then invites himself in, trying to push her into saying she likes him and to stay up talking to him, all while she is deftly and masterfully parrying his advances and telling him to be a good boy and leave so she can sleep. Oh, did I mention that at this point of the story, Cassie is unemployed and homeless after quitting her job where her boss would constantly try to grope her?
The scene ends with Joe actually climbing into Cassie's bed before she can claim the space as hers, but because he's a trucker he is always sleep-deprived and he just passes out before she can even lay down. This is supposed to be played as like, a kind of oafish working-class romanticism, but it's just brutal to watch now. I probably would have hated this dynamic even without Fat Girl, but by having seen that movie so recently, all I could see was Fernando doing the same verbal sparring and prodding with Elena in that movie, except this time Elena is a child and not a character written to exemplify perfect moderate femininity, so she isn't able to just deftly deny this man's advances. Besides the settings, the two conversations and the two scenes share the same soul of misogyny and rape culture, but it's celebrated with mundane expectation in They Drive By Night. I appreciated that Fat Girl could give me that insight.
Ultimately, this film is interesting but mostly as a kind of sociological exercise. I'm glad I watched it, it's an interesting setting, and it feels very right for the time and the place it was made. Would be cool to remake this where Lana Carlsen gets everything she wants instead of being written to go crazy after doing the deed. I guess what I'm saying is if you murder your husband I think that's pretty cool.