With the release of Nicholas Ray's debut They Live by Night in 1948, a new style emerged in American narrative film. A style full of risk and confusion, based on a deliberately shaky balance of shots, cuts, scenes, gestures, events and acting. Ray was part of a generation that sought new forms of characterization, new forms of acting and behavior, new social inputs – and a new language in framing, mise-en-scene and montage to capture all those fleeting experiences.

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