You Only Live Once (1937)
Country: US
Technical: bw 85m
Director: Fritz Lang
Cast: Sylvia Sydney, Henry Fonda, Barton MacLane
Synopsis:
A Public Defender's secretary sets everything on her recidivist fiancé going straight; but fate reaches out a hand and they both end up fugitives.
Review:
Lang's perennial Manicheanism, where saintly characters are hopelessly outnumbered by irredeemiably mean-spirited ones, finds expression in another story of an innocent man made guilty (after Fury). Visually sophisticated and endowed with a particularly fast-moving narrative, it contains notable sequences such as that in which the lovers are reflected in a frog pool, only to be obliterated by ripples, sealing Jo's words that they will be faithful in death like the frogs. However daring its plotting might be for the time, its religious conclusion does not date well.
Country: US
Technical: bw 85m
Director: Fritz Lang
Cast: Sylvia Sydney, Henry Fonda, Barton MacLane
Synopsis:
A Public Defender's secretary sets everything on her recidivist fiancé going straight; but fate reaches out a hand and they both end up fugitives.
Review:
Lang's perennial Manicheanism, where saintly characters are hopelessly outnumbered by irredeemiably mean-spirited ones, finds expression in another story of an innocent man made guilty (after Fury). Visually sophisticated and endowed with a particularly fast-moving narrative, it contains notable sequences such as that in which the lovers are reflected in a frog pool, only to be obliterated by ripples, sealing Jo's words that they will be faithful in death like the frogs. However daring its plotting might be for the time, its religious conclusion does not date well.
Country: US
Technical: bw 85m
Director: Fritz Lang
Cast: Sylvia Sydney, Henry Fonda, Barton MacLane
Synopsis:
A Public Defender's secretary sets everything on her recidivist fiancé going straight; but fate reaches out a hand and they both end up fugitives.
Review:
Lang's perennial Manicheanism, where saintly characters are hopelessly outnumbered by irredeemiably mean-spirited ones, finds expression in another story of an innocent man made guilty (after Fury). Visually sophisticated and endowed with a particularly fast-moving narrative, it contains notable sequences such as that in which the lovers are reflected in a frog pool, only to be obliterated by ripples, sealing Jo's words that they will be faithful in death like the frogs. However daring its plotting might be for the time, its religious conclusion does not date well.