AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

weezeralfalfa This interesting Warner crime drama is partly based upon A.I. Bezzerides' 1938 novel "Long Haul", while the last half is a reworking of the last portion of Warner's 1935 film "Bordertown", in which George Raft takes the place of Paul Muni, Alan Hale replaces Eugene Pallette, and Ida Lupino does Betty Davis's role. The first half introduces most of the main characters and consists of a drama about the financial and practical hardships of independent truckers during the depression era. Several spectacular truck accidents are staged, often caused by a driver falling asleep from driving too many hours. We are introduced to Ann Sheridan's character: Cassie, a wisecracking cynical waitress in a coffee shop , and her budding romance with George Raft's character: Joe Febrini. We are also introduced to Joe's truck-driving brother, Paul(Humphrey Bogart), and his long suffering wife Pearl(Gale Page), who would like to have a child, but can't afford one. ..... The second half begins with Joe accepting the offer of Ed(Alan Hale) to join his trucking company, after Joe and Paul lost their truck in a fiery accident, in which Paul lost his right arm. We are introduced to Ed's beautiful, sophisticated, wife , Lana(Ida Lupino). Although Ed is an extrovert: friendly and always joking, he is too oafish for Lana's liking, and frequently gets drunk at parties. She would much prefer Joe as a lover. Apparently, they had a brief prior relationship. She was obsessed with resuming their secrete relationship, but Joe turned her down, saying that Ed is his friend, as well as employer, and that he hoped to marry Cassie as soon as he can afford to. Lana is quite jealous of Cassie. When they meet, she sizes her up as an inferior woman to herself. To hopefully make herself more available to Joe, in his mind, Lana took advantage of a situation to indirectly murder her husband(Ed). She made it look like an accident, which it was initially reported to be. But in her hysterical confrontation with Joe, she yelled that she had murdered her husband so she could have Joe, and that she would claim that he made her do it, if he didn't cooperate.....In court, it was proven that Joe had nothing to do with the murder. When Lana took the stand, she was as if in a trance, repeating that "The door made me do it". She was concluded to be insane, thus not responsible for her actions. Although many reviews consider Lana's testimony the climax of the film, to me , the climax occurred previously during her hysterical pleading with Joe..... To my knowledge, this was Bogart's last film in which he played a supporting actor. In his next film: "High Sierra", he would be paired with Ida Lupino as the lead actors. In that film, Ida's character wasn't nearly as interesting as in the present film, but she still served well as eye candy. Now 22, Ida had been starring in minor films since age 14! Her performance here was good enough to earn her a contract with Warner. In addition to his movie career, George Raft was a well established dancer, and danced in some of his early films : quite different from his later slick gangster persona. When he moved to Warner in 1939, he tended to be cast in roles that Bogey would be an alternative for. In fact, he was offered the lead roles in "High Sierra", and "The Maltese Falcon" : roles that Bogey picked up and added to his popularity.

Scott Amundsen Some films are simply greater than the sum of their parts. Ingrid Bergman went on record several times that no one on the CASABLANCA shoot had any clue that they were making a film that would rival the likes of CITIZEN KANE for the title of "Greatest American Film." One suspects the same "business as usual" atmosphere prevailed on the set of THEY DRIVE BY NIGHT, a noir melodrama directed by Raoul Walsh for Warner Bros in 1940. A partial reworking of an earlier film titled BORDERTOWN, this film follows the ups and downs of the Fabrini brothers, long-haul truckers trying to move up from dodging poverty and the bill collectors at every turn to sufficient success to allow one brother to marry and the other, already married, to start a family.Good enough setup for noir melodrama, but it deviates wildly right in the middle of the picture into a crime drama. The crime in question is murder and the criminal case dominates the second half of the film. Somehow the transition from one kind of story to another works remarkably well, so well that I would consider it a classic of the noir genre.All the more remarkable when you realize that this was a B picture. Shot on a budget of $400,000.00, a modest sum even in 1940, with a cast of Warner Bros stalwarts, none of whom were great stars at the time.Joe Fabrini, the older, unmarried brother, is played by George Raft. Raft was in fact two years younger than Bogart, but his character is definitely the alpha dog, calling the shots and looking out for his brother in the time-honored manner of older brothers everywhere. Raft was never much of an actor, and never quite made it out of the B pictures, but in the right part, with the right director, he could be quite good, as is the case here.Brother Paul is played by Humphrey Bogart, who in 1940 was still a couple of years away from his eventual superstardom. Bogart displays a gentleness and sensitivity that he seldom got to show once he became a big star.The rest of the men in the cast are Warner's contract players, solid character actors all. It's the women who really elevate the piece to near A status.Ann Sheridan plays Cassie Hartley, a wise-cracking, down-on-her-luck waitress with whom Joe falls in love almost against his will, focused as he is on the trucking business. Sheridan brings her usual "oomph" to the role and gets most of the best smartass lines.Paul's wife Pearl is played by Gale Page, an actress of decent ability whose career was pretty much spent in B pictures, probably because she excelled neither in dramatics or in beauty. But Page is just right here; putting someone with bigger acting chops or greater beauty in this role would have thrown the picture badly off balance.Then there's Ida Lupino as Lana Carlsen, the wife of a friend of Joe's who owns his own trucking company and who secretly lusts after Joe despite his repeated curt rejections; he admits she's attractive, but he's a man of honor: he will not betray his friend by sleeping with his wife. Ever.Lana's passion for Joe is ultimately her undoing. She does not love her husband, and probably only married him for his money, so one night after a party at which he gets sloppy drunk, she puts the car in the garage, leaving it running, and closes the doors. Her husband, dead drunk, dies of carbon monoxide poisoning.The DA rules it an accident, so Lana cons Joe into coming into her late husband's business as her "partner," though it is clear that her use of that word implies more than just business. Joe reluctantly agrees, mainly so that he can give a job to Paul, who in the middle of the film loses an arm in a wreck after falling asleep at the wheel.Lana thinks she's got him. But he still wants nothing to do with her, partly because her late husband was his friend but because by this time he has decided to ask Cassie to marry him. Driven to desperation, Lana confesses her crime to Joe in a misguided attempt to show proof of her love for him. Appalled, Joe makes tracks, and Lana, not about to be outdone, decides to tell the DA that yes, she killed her husband, but she did it because Joe Fabrini told her to.The trial that follows is pretty standard stuff for a noir melodrama, until Lana takes the stand. What happens in these few minutes should have garnered Lupino an Oscar nomination, but she was still a B actress being groomed as a possible foil for Bette Davis. In fact, watching this film, I thought what a great part Lana would have been for Davis. I don't know if it was ever offered to her, but if it was and she turned it down, it was a happy mistake, because as much as I love Bette Davis, Ida Lupino is so perfect, so compelling, and at the end so utterly chilling in the part that she OWNS it. And then some.Not bad legs for a B picture, it was a huge hit that propelled Bogart toward full stardom. Unfortunately it did not do the same for Lupino, a brilliant and gifted actress whom the studio cruelly misused; with her titanic talents, she could have given even La Davis a run for her money if the studio had only allowed her to.This is one of those movies that I always simply MUST sit down and watch whenever it comes on. It is a great demonstration that it is not always necessary to break the bank to make great entertainment.

moonspinner55 Truck-driving brothers George Raft and Humphrey Bogart have nightly adventures hauling produce to local markets until Raft lands himself a position in the office; unfortunately, this means having to mingle with the raucous boss and the boss's wife, a scheming shrew with murder on her mind. Raoul Walsh ably directed this quintessential Warner Bros. drama, hard-bitten and yet humorously disengaged. However, one can easily sense the narrative coming unhinged in the second-half, which leads to a jailhouse-and-courtroom finale that seems to have nothing to do with the promising earlier scenario of working stiffs on the open road. The pungent, pithy dialogue from screenwriters Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay (working from A.I. Bezzerides' novel "Long Haul") can't camouflage the shift in priorities, and the 'winking' tag seems like a put-on. Still entertaining, with Raft a smoldering (if somewhat stationary) screen presence. **1/2 from ****

OutsideHollywoodLand They Drive By Night shows the tough and tight world of truckers, circa 1940. George Raft and Humphrey Bogart play the Fabrini brothers, Joe and Paul, who live in a world of long distance driving across the country's winding roads, cozy diners, smart-talking waitresses, and the camaraderie of their fellow truckers. George Raft gives a solid performance as Joe Fabrini, who's driven by his dream of owning his own truck one day, and answering to no one. Humphrey Bogart as Paul Fabrini, is more comfortable with his lot, yet would literally give his right arm in service to his brother's dreams. Always one step ahead of frustrated bill collectors and the wrath of their bosses, the scrappy and wise-cracking Fabrini brothers are a popular duo on the road. Along the way, Joe meets a waitress, Cassie, (a lovely Ann Sheridan) who sparkles through his gritty world, slinging snappy backtalk and steak with the best of them. Gale Page delivers as Pearl Fabrini, the devoted wife of Paul, who is weary of seeing her husband drive off into the sunrise after a few scant hours of domestic bliss. Alan Hale, Roscoe Karns, and George Tobias round out the cast. Yet all eyes are riveted on Ida Lupino, who steals the show with her tour-de-force performance as bitter and ill-tempered Lana, who stops at nothing to get her man – in this case our boy, Joe. Whether carping about Joe's clothes and lack of attention or sniping at her working class husband, Ed, Lupino hammers the point home that hell than no fury like a woman in heat who is ignored. The unforgettable moment comes during the climatic courtroom scene, which is strictly vintage Lupino all the way. This black-and-white classic, skillfully directed by veteran Raoul Walsh (White Heat, The Strawberry Blonde, Sadie Thompson, What Price Glory), has many film noir elements, but is too optimistic in this reviewer's opinion to be assigned a place within the noir library. The screenplay by Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay, moves along at a steady pace, full of good humor, drama, and thrills. And you'll never look at an automatic garage door the same way again!