Live Fast, Die Young

The title and accompanying graphics definitely lured me into giving Live Fast, Die Young a viewing. Oh, and also the fact that is was directed by Paul Henreid. I think Henreid did a competent job with the direction. The sets and art direction were both also solid enough as well. As for the cast, it's a broad ensemble for sure but given the material they had to work with, i think they all did a decent job. The main, and glaring issue with Live Fast, Die Young is the script. It just showed no imagination, no humor, and no real character development. Everyone was very one dimensionally bad or good with no one in-between. You either had a 'heart of gold' or were 'rotten to the core' and all presented in the simplest, most cliched 50's dialogue. Oh, and all of them were uniformly cynical. The whole thing was actually kind of depressing.

Late fifties and early sixties was the period for juvenile delinquency films, in America and also in Europe. So this good fast paced movie describes rather in a good way this search for precisely fast way of living, and also dying. Paul Henried however satisfied me better in his next movie GIRLS ON THE LOOSE, also with female but this time no more juvenile delinquants, but mature female gangsters armed robbers, rougher, tougher than men. Women with men's characters, no more no less. This very one LIVE FAST... focuses on small scale hoodlum girls. Not bad, I repeat, worth watching. Universal studios produced it, very surprising. And the alarm system trick was obviously inspired by RIFIFI, where the gangsters "disconnected" the alarm systen the very same way. This is here a medium noir film, with some gangsters and a heist scheme too, but too much juvenile oriented for my taste.

The number of 'youth gone wild' movies increased dramatically during the 1950s, as apparently American society was concerned about the rise in leather-clad teens and the like. Because of this, "Live Fast, Die Young" is just one of many such films, though it focuses more on a girl gone wild.

Jill (Norma Eberhardt) is a trashy, nasty, rebellious teen when the film begins...plus she thinks she knows everything. So she quits school, tells her no-good father to get lost and she heads to the big city to make her fortune. Once there, she becomes a 'B-girl'...a lady who hangs out in bars...encouraging men to drink more and robbing them at every opportunity. But the thrills of rolling drunks gets old very fast and soon she ingratiates herself on a gang leader (Mike Connors) and helps him plan a seemingly fool-proof robbery. Much of the time, her bland as skim milk sister is hanging about, though she seems to have absolutely no idea why she's there or what to do...a major weakness in the story.

This is a good 'bad' film. It's trashy and sensational and never tries to be an artistic triumph. Instead, it's just a silly, albeit reasonably well made, exploitation film.

.... that would be Paul Henreid. Yes, THAT Paul Henreid of "Casablanca" and "Now Voyager" and all things Warner Brothers in the 1940s. But that was then, this is the 1950s.

Our heroine isn't going to be stuck at home with her drunkard father like her "good" older sister, so she sticks out her thumb and heads for a life of crime, small-time at first emptying wallets in a clip joint, but she quickly graduates to grand theft auto and books to the west coast. She joins a gang led by movie tough guy Troy Donahue and becomes part of a caper to rob the local post office of a shipment of diamonds. The gang all get jobs with this federal agency without any identification except their nice white bread faces and busily prepare for the big day. The "good" sister arrives and tries to intervene, but it all goes south and the teenage vermin are dealt with accordingly, probably something minimum-security because of those nice white faces. It's full of bad dialogue and teenage posturing.

This film has a problem typical of its genre. The actresses who play teens are MUCH too old for their parts. One was 27 and the other 29. They don't look especially young for their ages so the "juvenile delinquent" aspect is quite flawed.

However, the film has an adequate script and a certain amount of emotional power. The embittered Dad is believably depicted as is the dissatisfaction of the daughters.

The grown up criminals are appropriately sophisticated in their immorality. Since I am a Peggy Maley fan, I want to give her oh-so-immoral depiction of gang leader Sue a special plug.

Not a great film but not a bad way to spend some time.