You Only Live Once ***** (1937, Sylvia Sidney, Henry Fonda, William Gargan, Barton MacLane) – Classic Movie Review 2176

Fritz Lang’s splendid 1937 film noir crime melodrama thriller You Only Live Once is one of his best, most distinguished movies. It stars Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney and is set in Depression-hit America.

Director Fritz Lang’s splendid 1937 film noir crime melodrama thriller You Only Live Once is one of his best, most distinguished movies. It stars Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney and is set in Depression-hit America. Fonda, Sidney and Lang are all on their finest, highest quality form here.

Fonda stars as troubled ex-con career criminal named Eddie Taylor who finds that the road from jail and back to respectable society is far from an easy straight and narrow one. Eddie hooks up with big city public defender’s secretary Joan Graham (Sidney), who loves him, believing he is a good man with bad luck.

She uses her influence to get him released early, and they get married and try to make a life together as he tries to go straight. But fate is not on their side. He lands back in prison, but then escapes, and they both go on the run, trying to a make a break for the Canadian border.

In keeping with the gathering storm gloomy times just before World War Two, the atmospheric mood is poetic, dark and doomed in Gene Towne’s tragic story and screenplay (written with C Graham Baker). It borrows elements from the real-life story of the infamous gangsters Bonnie and Clyde yarn and embroiders on it to turn it into a successful fiction.

Poetic it may be, but its tough tone brought it into conflict with the American censorship production code, particularly in the robbery scene, and it was originally cut.

Also in the cast are William Gargan, Barton MacLane, Jean Dixon, Jerome Cowan, Margaret Hamilton, Ward Bond, Guinn Williams, John Wray, Jonathan Hale, Ben Hall, Jean Stoddard, Wade Botelier, Henry Taylor, Jack Carson, Chic Sale, Warren Hymer, Walter De Palma, Claire Sinclair, Stanley Blystone and Harry Wilson.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2176

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Fritz Lang (1890–1976)