They Drive By Night

Seen for the first time in February 2013.

"They Drive By Night" is what I call a Frankenstein monster of a movie. It seems like a beast stitched together from the dead parts of aborted projects. It begins light and zippy, yet as some kind of bleak Upton Sinclair kind of thing. All kinds of depressing stuff happens to these two Depression era truck drivers where Humphrey Bogart plays second fiddle to George Raft, which doesn't seem quite right, but nonetheless works. The bleakness is leavened by the zippy dialogue and the fact that everyone is constantly smiling and telling jokes and laughing. The movie is fast paced and lightly entertaining and also serious. I almost thought I had stumbled upon an underrated gem, even if I suspected it was close to a formulaic iteration from a genre I am unfamiliar with.

Then it falls apart in the third act, appreciable only on a camp level. Shooting for drama or what not, the film misses our hearts and hits us in the funny bone. Ida Lupino in particular is too much. She overacts the shit out of her role. And what was tightly written sharp dialogue in the movie's first half becomes, in the second half,  tedious at best, fatuous at worst, and all too often winkingly mawkish. But honestly, it sort of amazes me that Ida Lupino's career did not nosedive after this role. She is a hilariously bad actress here. Like the actors in "Troll 2" may have learned how to act by watching Ida Lupino's performance in "The Drive By Night." Anne Sheridan on the other hand is saucy, a tough broad who can crack wise with the best of them. Unfortunately, she and Humphrey Bogart disappear in the second half of the movie, as the bad moon of Ida Lupino rises. I liked Troll 2 though, and I enjoy camp. It's just so disappointing when the first half of the movie showed so much promise. Grade B-.