You Only Live Once

Fritz Lang did a great job with this well-acted, uniquely photographed drama from the '30s. It's not anything to see if you're looking for a lift, though. Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney, so young it's unbelievable, play a husband and wife escaping the law. Sidney is a secretary who falls in love with a convict and marries him as soon as he gets out of prison. He's a three-time felon and has a tough time getting back into society. Ultimately, he's convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sent to death row. He escapes with Sidney and they become sort of a Bonnie and Clyde on the run for the Canadian border.

There are some plot problems, for instance, how Fonda got the gun in order to escape. Also, the boss at the trucking firm where he works is over the top in his dislike for Fonda and refuses to give him another chance.

The acting is very intense from both Sidney and Fonda. Looking at the young Fonda, one can really see where Jane got her looks. This isn't a big film, nor is it a happy one, but it's worth seeing.

The sad and unfortunate life of a couple living in the Great Depression era that becomes involved into a spiral of distresses with fateful results . The exiled German director Fritz Lang gives a nice fim in his American stay , following the debut with "Fury" starred by Spencer Tracy, later to become master in all kinds of genres . This is the story of an innocent man, Henry Fonda, accused for arson , he is an ex-convict who is helped by his girlfriend : Sylvia Sidney , and eventually both of whom escape .

A stirring and moving drama with an adorable love story , though some date and glum. It results to be a peculiar variation on a Bonnie and Clyde theme , though the latter were a real criminals , this couple Fonda/Sidney turns out good-natured and kind people . Here there is a feeling of deep sadness and distress, as well as inevitability of doom that was never more compellingly captured than in this exciting . Henry Fonda gives a nice acting as an ex-con wants to mend himself his ways and attempts to cross into Canada along with his sweetheart very well played by Sylvia Sidney . They are stunningly accompanied by William Gargan, Barton MacLane , Margaret Hamilton, Big Boy Williams , Jean Dixon , among others .

This shattering motion picture with brilliant cinematography by Leon Shamroy , was poignantly and competently directed by the master Fritz Lang , being impressively scripted by Graham Baker . It results to be Fritz Lang's second Hollywood film , after his German career that includes titles as "Metropolis" , "Crimes of Dr Mabuse" , "Woman in the Moon" , "Sigfried" , "Destiny" , "Spiders" . After his consolidated German career and due to Nazi uprising , he established in America where shot a lot of films with considerable successes , such as "Return of Frank James" , "Western Union" , "Hangmen also Die" , "Woman in the Window" , "Ministry of Fear", "Scarlet Street" , "Cloak and dagger" , "Secret beyond the Door" , "Rancho Notorious" , "Clash by night", "The Big Heat" , "Moonfleet", "Human Desire", "When the city Sleeps" , "Beyond a resonante doubt" , among others . Rating 7/10 . Worthwhile seeing .

Joan Graham is the secretary for Stephen Witney, an honest and dedicated public defender, who succeeds in doing something he would almost rather not do: get Joan's sweetheart, Eddie Taylor, out of prison. Eddie is a good man, but Joan's sister, Bonnie, and Stephen both agree that he is no good for Joan. Eddie was born trouble. Joan and Eddie get married and set out to prove the naysayers wrong. Eddie gets a good, steady job as a truck driver; but a series of disasters sends his life spiraling out of control and the fiercely loyal Joan's along with it.

Fritz Lang directs this hard-hitting melodrama and, as always, fills it with striking images. The shot of Eddie (Henry Fonda) in his cell, with the shadows of the bars reaching out to meet the bored and uninterested guard, stands out. The shots of a wide-eyed and desperate Fonda asking Joan (Sylvia Sidney) for a gun are a triumph for Lang, Fonda and Lang's cinematographer, Leon Shamroy. Lang also gets excellent work out of his editor, Daniel Mandell, who helps Lang to juxtapose images in a suggestive way, e.g. the shots of the frogs with shots of Joan and Eddie.

Standing back from the film and looking at is as a whole makes it something of a marvel. We begin with light comedy, proceed to an adorable romance and then follow the characters as their lives - and the film itself - grows steadily darker.

This is quite a well known film with Henry Fonda playing three time loser Eddie Taylor. Much of the plot is improbable, indeed the prison bust-out is Fantasy Island stuff because even in the 1930s security for a man under sentence of death in the United States was an order of magnitude stronger than depicted here, but this is a film that was clearly produced as a social document as much as for entertainment.

Eddie Taylor is a most unappealing character, one whom even an actor of Fonda's stature cannot inject with empathy, added to which if he'd had so much as a shred of decency he would never have dragged down his girl with him, would probably not have married her in the first place. Nevertheless, the question remains, how does society deal with even the repentant habitual criminal? Seventy and more years on, little if anything has been done to address that problem, certainly in America with its enormous prison population and the continued destruction of unskilled jobs which reduce almost to nothing the prospects of the underclass – criminal or otherwise – of making an honest living.

Not a movie to see if you're feeling depressed. Arguably, this is the darkest entry in the doomed lovers genre, and also one of the most affecting. Three-time loser Eddie (Fonda) and his pregnant wife (Sidney) are on the run after killing a priest, and after Eddie has tried his best to go straight in the face of a hostile, uncaring society. As the fog closes in, the tender couple tries to make their way to the border and freedom. What they get instead is freedom of a different kind.

Anyone doubting that cinema is basically a medium of manipulation needs to examine this grim masterpiece of early noir. From an irresistibly tearful Sidney to an unyielding fate to a relentlessly bleak photography, we're caught up in Lang's carefully crafted artistic vision. The parts fit together inexorably, driving the lovers and us toward an inevitable conclusion. The only visual missing is an onrushing train. In my book, the movie's one of the purest examples of how visual artistry can overcome plot contrivance, for there are an unfortunate number of the latter.

Too bad the sad-faced Sidney is largely forgotten. It's really her marvelously expressive range that registers the tragedy and moves the audience. Far from glamorous, her talent remains nonetheless unusually poignant. All in all, the movie's in the same league as the transcendent They Live By Night (1947), and stands as possibly the polar opposite of the giddy Bonnie And Clyde (1967). In my little book, it's Lang's most compelling American film, despite the relative obscurity.