12019-01-27T21:59:21+00:00Patrick Keatingfdfdb363527b48ac29800c3d2a6f44da6939bc3b11They Live by Night (1948)plain2019-01-27T21:59:21+00:00Critical Commons19482019-01-26T01:28:23ZVideoNicholas RayThey Live by NightPatrick Keatingfdfdb363527b48ac29800c3d2a6f44da6939bc3b
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12019-01-27T22:20:25+00:005.14 They Live by Night1They Live by Night (1948)plain2019-01-27T22:20:25+00:00Director Nicholas Ray could have used a crane and a wide-angle lens to juxtapose the three men and the billboard, but a helicopter allows him to shoot the scene from farther away with a telephoto lens, registering the human figures and the billboard at a comparable scale. As the camera follows the thieves from above, the billboard appears out of nowhere, popping into the frame from below. This strange composition, with its flattened space and its unpredictable scaling, mocks the absurdity of postwar consumer culture.