Directed by Nicholas Ray • 1948 • United States
Starring Cathy O’Donnell, Farley Granger, Howard Da Silva
Legendary director Nicholas Ray began his career with this lyrical film noir, the first in a series of existential genre films overflowing with sympathy for America’s outcasts and underdogs. When the wide-eyed fugitive Bowie (Farley Granger), having broken out of prison with some bank robbers, meets the innocent Keechie (Cathy O’Donnell), each recognizes something in the other that no one else ever has. The young lovers envision a new, decent life together, but as they flee the cops and contend with Bowie’s fellow outlaws, who aren’t about to let him go straight, they realize there’s nowhere left to run. Ray brought an outsider’s sensibility honed in the theater to this debut, using revolutionary camera techniques and naturalistic performances to craft a profoundly romantic crime drama that paved the way for decades of lovers-on-the-run thrillers to come.
Directed by Fritz Lang • 1937 • United States
Starring Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda, Barton MacLane
Fritz Lang brings his bitterly ironic fatalism to this prototypical couple-on-the-run crime drama and key forerunner of film noir. Ex-con Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda) is a career criminal struggling t...
Directed by Terrence Malick • 1973 • United States
Starring Martin Sheen, Sissy Spacek, Warren Oates
BADLANDS announced the arrival of a major talent: Terrence Malick. His impressionistic take on the notorious Charles Starkweather killing spree of the late 1950s uses a serial-killer narrative as...
Directed by Stanley Kubrick • 1957 • United States
Starring Kirk Douglas, Ralph Meeker, Adolph Menjou
Stanley Kubrick’s PATHS OF GLORY is among the most powerful antiwar films ever made. A fiery Kirk Douglas stars as a World War I French colonel who goes head-to-head with the army’s ruthless ...
