They Live by Night
Ray directed his first and only Broadway production, the Duke Ellington musical "Beggar's Holiday", in 1946. One year later, he directed his first film, "They Live by Night". It was not released for two years due to the chaotic conditions surrounding Howard Hughes' takeover of RKO Pictures. An almost impressionistic take on film noir, it was notable for its extreme empathy for society's young outsiders, a recurring motif in Ray's oeuvre. Its subject matter, two young lovers running from the law, had an influence on the sporadically popular movie subgenre often called "love on the run". Other examples are Joseph H. Lewis's "Gun Crazy" (1950), Arthur Penn's "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967), Terrence Malick's "Badlands" (1973), and Robert Altman's adaptation of the novel that served as the basis for "They Live by Night", "Thieves Like Us" (1974).