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Fritz Lang continues his take-no-prisoners indictment of America’s curious relationship with crime; this time he presents the thesis that an innocent man can be a pawn in cosmic game of injustice. Three-time loser Henry Fonda, the glummest actor in ’30s films, doesn’t mean to rob or kill, but gosh darn it, They Made Him a Criminal. Those considerations aside, it’s a wonderful cinematic achievement, made all the better by a decent digital restoration.

You Only Live Once

Blu-ray

ClassicFlix

1937 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 86 min. / Street Date July 25, 2017 / 29.98

Starring: Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda, Barton MacLane, Jean Dixon,

William Gargan, Jerome Cowan, Charles ‘Chic’ Sale, Margaret Hamilton, Warren Hymer,

Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams, Ward Bond, Jack Carson, Jonathan Hale

Cinematography: Leon Shamroy

Art Direction: Alexander Toluboff

Film Editor: Daniel Mandell

Original Music: Hugo Friedhofer

Written by Graham Baker and Gene Towne

Produced by Walter Wanger

Directed by Fritz Lang...

This charming Roy Rogers oater could reboot interest in vintage ‘series’ westerns. Basically a film for little kids, it’s earnestly played by all concerned and director William Witney’s direction sparkles. The added filip that makes the difference is the beautifully restored Trucolor image — Roy’s wonder horse Trigger is indeed magnificent. I listened carefully, but I don’t think Roy actually says, “Yippie-ki-yay, M_____f____r.”

Sunset in the West

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1950 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 67 min. / Street Date April 18, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 19.95

Starring: Roy Rogers, Trigger, Estelita Rodriguez, Penny Edwards, Gordon Jones, Will Wright, Pierre Watkin, Charles La Torre, William Tannen, Gaylord Pendleton, Paul E. Burns, Dorothy Ann White, Riders of the Purple Sage.

Cinematography: Jack Marta

Color by Trucolor

Film Editor: Tony Martinelli

Original Music: R. Dale Butts

Special Effects: Howard & Theodore Lydecker

Written by Gerald Geraghty

Produced by Edward J. White

Directed...

I was saddened to learn this morning that Betty Garrett, the great star of stage, screen, and TV, passed away yesterday at the age of 94 after suffering an aortic aneurysm.

Garrett was one of those rare people — like, say, Jack Valenti — who happened to be a witness to and/or participant in a remarkably high number of historic events of the 20th century. She was a member of Orson Welles’s famed Mercury Theatre company, and was with him on the night that he shook up America with his infamous radio broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” (1938); she was Frank Sinatra’s leading lady in two of the earliest great M-g-m musical-comedies, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” (1949) and “On the Town” (1949); her career was greatly hurt by the Hollywood Red Scare after her husband, the Oscar nominated actor Larry Parks, refused to name names before the House Committee...