They Live by Night

Warner Bros. digs deep into its vaults to mine the nuggets for this fourth collection of film noir classics from Warners, MGM, and RKO, and hauls out a great value with five double features. "They Live by Night" (1948), the directorial debut of Nicholas Ray, is the masterpiece of the set, a haunting tale of young and naive lovers (Farley Granger and Cathy O'Donnell) thrust into a criminal underworld during the Depression. Ray's direction is sensitive and sure, and the tragedy of this rural noir is devastating. The disc also features the lesser-known "Side Street" (1950), Anthony Mann's reteaming of Granger and O'Donnell as New York newlyweds hunted by gangsters. What makes this collection so marvelous is the selection of oddities and discoveries. It doesn't get more hardboiled than Sterling Hayden's hard-case cop in Andre De Toth's "Crime Wave" (1954), a lean, low-budget crime thriller of an ex-con hounded by the cops when his former partners take his wife hostage, crisply shot on location. Jean Gillie plays one of the hardest, most heartless femmes fatales in the disc co-feature "Decoy" (1946) from Monogram Studios, a grimy Poverty Row gem and true B-movie, scuffed and cheap but driven by a curdled, cold-blooded heart. Robert Mitchum headlines "Where Danger Lives" (1950), one of his more tawdry crime films, with Howard Hughes "discovery" Faith Domergue, but it's the frayed B-ish "Tension" (1950) with the riveting Audrey Totter and Barry Sullivan that is the gritty find. A-lister Fred Zinnemann directs Van Heflin, Janet Leigh and Robert Ryan in "Act of Violence" (1948), a remarkably dark Hollywood drama in which the shadow of war and violence hangs over a vengeance-filled veteran. It shares a disc with John Sturges' cop procedural "Mystery Street" (1950) with Ricardo Montalban and Bruce Bennett. The final disc pairs Don Siegel's "The Big Steal" (1949), starring Mitchum and Jane Greer, with "Illegal" (1955), starring Edward G. Robinson. Each double feature is available separately or collected in the box set.

There are commentary tracks and terrific little individual featurettes for every film, providing invaluable and entertaining background notes and other tidbits on the many lesser known titles. My favorite track is the pairing of novelist James Ellroy and enthusiastic noir historian Eddie Muller on "Crime Wave," in which they challenge one another to identify Los Angeles locations between the censorship beeps that dot Ellroy's colorful patter. For other tracks, Muller teams with Granger on "They Live by Night," Totter joins historians Alain Silver and Elizabeth Ward on "Tension," and actress Nina Foch joins historian Patricia King Hanson for "Illegal." Also includes original trailers for most films.