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Customer Reviews
By Steven Hellerstedt "SH"
Well, this was different. THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT (1940) begins, rather unusually, as a story of the Fabrini brothers Joe (George Raft), and younger brother Paul (Humphrey Bogart). It tells the exciting story of the life of independent truckers. See them drink cup after cup of coffee, play game after game of pinball, and make pass after pass at the pretty waitress (Ann Sheridan as Cassie) in the roadside diner. Directed by the accomplished and usually brilliant action director Raoul Walsh, the first half of THEY DRIVE is an incredibly slow-starting action movie. You can, I suppose, squeeze just so much drama out of things when the biggest threat is drowsiness and the biggest enemy is a little fellow trying to collect on a note for the Fabrini truck. Bogart and Raft have good rapport - they look and act enough like brothers - and Walsh was in his element with tough loving men and tough talking women, but this one really takes its time before it develops any forward momentum.
Fortunately, THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT is hijacked at the midpoint by Ida Lupino, who proceeds to steal the movie from everyone else for the duration. Lupino plays Lana Carlsen, wife of big Ed Carlsen (Alan Hale), who, through circumstances best left unspoken, finds himself in a position to offer Joe a job with his trucking company. Big Ed Carlsen, in the best tradition of crime thriller husbands, is oblivious to the, er, tension between friend Joe and wife Lana. Ed Carlsen is one of those types who talks too loud, drinks too much, and laughs too hard at his own jokes. If you look hard enough you can usually see vultures circling high in the background the first time these guys show up in a movie. Anyway, things pick up considerably when the movie changes into its femme fatale clothes. The movie belongs to Lupino, who chews enough scenery to fill someone twice her size. What the heck, though. The part calls for it, and Lupino is every bit as good as Bette Davis would have been.
The print is in very good condition. Besides a theatrical trailer, the disk also includes a ten-minute special entitled `Divided Highway: The Story of They Drive by Night', a brief, okay introduction to the movie. Better yet is the 19-minute `Swingtime in the Movies,' a color Vitaphone short starring Fritz Feld as the autocratic, vaguely Prussian director Mr. Nitvitch. I've seen one other Nitvitch short, and they seem designed to parody directors, showcase some young actors, fill out a playbill, and show off Warner Brothers stars in the studio commissary or on the set. The youngsters in this one are Kathryn Kane and John Carroll, who Nitvitch is humorously directing in a musical western. The cameos include Pat O'Brien, Humphrey Bogart, Marie Windsor, and John Garfield.
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