George Raft

They Drive by Night

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Cassie and Joe in a car together

A film about truckers that doesn’t quite deliver – bum tish – They Drive by Night is also very much a story heading off up one road only to take a sharp turn onto another. George Raft (top billed) and Humphrey Bogart (fourth billed) play Joe and Paul Fabrini, brothers who drive as a team of “wildcat” drivers. They don’t work for the man, like many truckers do. Instead they’re entrepreneurial go-getters financing their own rig, buying up loads of farm produce and then shipping it to market where they sell it. Or that’s the idea. In fact they don’t own their own rig but they are working their way towards it inch … Read more

You and Me

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Sylvia Sidney and George Raft

What’s the best Fritz Lang film? The argument could go on all night, and there are so many to choose from – contenders include M, Fury, You Only Live Once, The Woman in the Window, or While the City Sleeps. Or how about Rancho Notorious, Metropolis, The Big Heat or Man Hunt? So how about the worst one? 1938’s You and Me is a prime candidate. It’s still an interesting if largely unsuccessful film. Lang himself considered it to be his worst, a “lousy picture”, he said in his autobiography, in which styles argue with each other while a miscast lead does his best to make sense of a character. George Raft is … Read more