The Cinematheque

35mm Print

“It’s a serenely simple film—contained and complete … Thieves Like Us seems to achieve beauty without artifice. It’s the closest to flawless of Altman’s films—a masterpiece.”

Pauline Kael, The New Yorker

After making Philip Marlowe over as a rumpled, ​’70s SoCal gumshoe in The Long Goodbye, Robert Altman went about adapting another text with hallowed ties to the noir canon. Thieves Like Us, like Nicolas Ray’s legendary They Live by Night, is based on Edward Anderson’s tale of two runaways traversing a Depression-crippled South. But whereas Ray rendered the romance with an intimate, soulful lyricism, Altman adopts a more dispassionate, zoomed-out view of the tragedy, favouring myth-sapping naturalism and period-accurate evocations (the music is diegetic and, for the most part, from radio) instead of melodrama. His lovers (Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall, reuniting with Altman after McCabe & Mrs. Miller) are gangly, awkward kids, guzzling Coca-Cola and fumbling through sex while playing at being criminals but suffering the consequences for keeps. Duvall, as ever, is utterly magnetic.

“Perhaps Altman’s most persistently charming film … Never portentous, never a mere spoof, this is a touching, intelligent, and—in its own small way—rather wonderful movie.”

Geoff Andrew, Time Out

“A seductive reverie of a film, Thieves Like Us affirms Robert Altman’s place in the front ranks of American directors.”

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times