They Drive by Night (1940)

They Drive by Night 
Directed by Raoul Walsh
Screenplay by Jerry Wald and Richard Macaulay from a novel by A.I. Bezzerides
1940/USA
Warner Bros.
First viewing/Netflix rental

[box] Joe Fabrini: Do you believe in love at first sight?

Cassie Hartley: It saves a lot of time.[/box]

I enjoyed this for its razor-sharp dialogue and outstanding cast, though I thought it fell apart a bit in the second half.

Wildcat truck-driver brothers Joe (George Raft) and Paul (Humphrey Bogart) Fabrini are struggling to make ends meet.  They spend days at a stretch on the road getting little if any sleep.  Paul also longs for his wife who would love to see him get an eight-to-five job even if it was digging ditches.  On one of their runs, Joe meets sassy waitress Cassie (and when the boys give her a lift, the two fall in love.

When it looks like the brothers have finally caught a break, tragedy strikes and their rig is totaled.  Then old friend Ed Carlsen (Alan Hale) offers Joe a job in the garage of his trucking firm.  Carlsen is a likable but garrulous drunk whose wife, Lana (Ida Lupino), clearly despises him and keeps making increasingly desperate plays for Joe.  But Joe is having none of it, citing his loyalty to Ed, and Lana begins to think that the only way to get “her” man is to get Ed out of the way.  With Roscoe Karns as a fellow truck driver.

The repartee between Ann Sheridan and the guys at the truck stop is just super and the first half or two-thirds of this film is a wonderful slice of working-class life in Depression-era America. The tone changes in the Third Act as the story becomes a love-triangle melodrama.  Ida Lupino is good as always but the plot just about forces her to go completely over the top and she starts chewing the scenery with a vengeance.  On balance, though, this is a solid film and well worth seeing.

Trailer