You Only Live Once [DVD]

Fritz Lang's best films were already behind him when he arrived in Hollywood. He would not surpass the films he made in Germany, but his American films are almost always worth seeing and sometimes approach greatness. You Only Live Once is one such film. The story concerns sympathetic criminal Eddie (Henry Fonda) trying to go straight and the woman who has stayed by him, legal secretary Joan (Sylvia Sidney). Lang makes the audience root for Eddie, who is not a typical snarling thirties gangster, but a basically decent man who through bad luck and bad choices has found himself in a desperate situation. Fonda is perfect for this role, and gives a fine performance. Sidney is equally good as a woman fighting against friends, family and circumstances to stay with the man she loves. It is her performance which makes the film a terrific romance as well as a fine thriller.The print on the Image DVD is fairly good. It shows quite a lot of wear and tear, but seems complete. There may be many scratches, but the black and white photography still looks stunning with good detail and clarity. The soundtrack unfortunately has a great deal of hiss and crackle. Occasionally this makes the dialogue quite hard to hear. Nevertheless the film is still perfectly watchable and the flaws present in the print and soundtrack did not spoil my enjoyment of what remains an excellent film. The DVD has no extras.

A Bonnie & Clyde sort of story only this couple didn't start out guilty; life turns went totally awry for them leading them deeper and deeper into darkness. They had those who believed in them & wanted their best..... but those good things came too late.Henry Fonda has always been a favorite of mine so watching him so early in his career was a treat; so handsome, young, and clean cut. Sylvia Sidney was such a pure soul, loved her guy, believed in him no matter what. They were such a lovely young couple with their lives before them.... but the cards were stacked wrong. I wish things had been different.....

Probably the best home-video release of this classic thriller, it's reasonably clear and the image is at least legible. (In previous editions, the image was too dark, with many scenes barely visible, and there was significant wobbling so that some scenes were out-of-focus.) YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE is one of several movies produced by Walter Wanger which seems to have become ensnared in copyright problems, and there has been no attempt to restore these films. (Another example is HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT, also from 1937, directed by Frank Borzage.) YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE benefits from superb performances by Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney, and this may be one of the best directing jobs Fritz Lang ever did in the US: in this BluRay release, you can at least see some of the imaginative visual effects which Lang brought off to highlight both the romanticism and the fatalism of this prototype of the outlaw-couple-on-the-run story. ClassicFlix is to be commended for bringing this great film to an acceptable BluRay release; now if only this movie could get a major restoration....

Unfortunately, Amazon does not do any quality control of the films that are offered in Prime Video, so many are such poor prints that they look like bootlegs.Despite that, this film is typical of Lang in that it makes a social statement. In this case, the statement is about the failures of the criminal justice system and failures of society to help those who have served their time and are hoping to lead a useful life.Although told through the value system of the 1930s, it's easy to see that very little in attitudes has changed in 2020.Amazon needs to insist on better-quality prints for the films offered on Prime.

The film and the acting are quite good. It is a classic '30s film directed by Fritz Lang and it has its very strong moments both visually and dramatically. But, and it is a large "but," the visual quality of the Blu-ray is about as poor as I've seen. The company is Classic Flix ,and there is a rather unconvincing bonus feature showing the restoration of the film. My only previous experience with Classic Flix is its Blu-ray of He Walked By Night, one of my favorite noir films, which visually is only just satisfactory; in fact, I wasn't sure it was any better visually than my old standard DVD. But You Only Live Once is quite terrible in visual quality for a Blu-ray, and I wonder if the DVD is distinguishable from the Blu-ray. Either is only barely watchable. The price is high for the quality, and I suggest you think very hard before spending money on the Blu-ray disk.

It was total heaven to see Henry Fonda practically as a teenager and to realize that he was the total actor even in his early days. I loved the movie and really got involved with it. Fritz Lang was the total package: a great visualist, a great director, and a man who could bring out the best in his actors even though he was a tyrant and anyone who worked for him hated him.There was that 30's innocence about the movie which I see in other 30's movies. It wasn't afraid to plumb the emotions of a story and visually tried to capture the beauty and sensitivity of the emotions involved in the story-line.While I loved Sylvia Sidney, there was that dated over-acting which she does in most of her movies.

This 1930s film moves with a lot of speed and kept me guessing until the end. I'm not a huge fan of Henry Fonda but I enjoyed his performance here. The plot gets to going early and the pacing is excellent. I definitely recommend this one.

Well, saying this isn't good is kind of an understatement. It's like a play for an amateur troupe written by someone who doesn't know how it should go; totally unrealistic plot line, bathetic acting, no real character development. The whole thing looks like it was shot on sets and backlots. Treacly, soppy sentimentality. Most unbelievable criminals ever. Plus, it rains like Manilla and the last scene takes place in what looks like Sherwood Forest. I guess this was what passed for popular drama in the '30s? I can't believe I watched the whole thing...but...the camerawork and lighting were good. Pass on this one. Not a classic.

This brilliant (and typically fatalistic) early (1937) Fritz Lang noir was the film-maker’s second film in Hollywood, following the previous year’s 'revenge mob classic’, Fury, and You Only Live Once continued Lang’s exploration of many of the themes of the earlier film (and, indeed, themes from his previous German period). As with Fury, we once again have a pair of young lovers, here Henry Fonda’s Eddie Taylor and Sylvia Sidney’s Jo Graham, struggling to survive both the forces of a depressed economy and an unforgiving judicial system, but here, as well as (again) pointing up the potential flaws in the system of capital punishment, Lang also explores what actually 'makes’ a criminal (the 'three time loser’ Eddie) and the balance between social conditioning and innate human characteristics. Of course, Lang’s film is far from being a barrel of laughs (albeit the man’s dark, ironic humour surfaces at the most unexpected moments) and we’re not taken in for a second by the film’s upbeat beginning, but the film’s mix of suspense, ambiguous plot points and (frequently) sombre drama also allows for the film-maker (and cinematographer Leon Shamroy) to make You Only Live Once one of Lang’s most stunningly visual US efforts.Lang’s central pairing is outstanding – Fonda, cast against type as the (increasingly agitated) ex-con whose forced optimism is knocked back at every turn (whether by new-found landlords or employers); Sidney, again playing the demure optimist, whose honesty and integrity is gradually eroded as 'cynical society’ and her obsessive love for Eddie morphs the lovers’ (frog-like) love pact into a death pact. Fonda and Sidney thus monopolise the acting honours (and screen-time), but, elsewhere, Barton MacLane and Jean Dixon also impress as the 'restraining influences’ on Jo’s obsession with Eddie, MacLane as ‘public defender’ Stephen Whitney and Dixon as Jo’s sister Bonnie. William Gargan’s Catholic priest, Father Dolan, also provides a significant motif for Lang, as the man of the cloth lies for the benefit of Eddie and provides him with a potential spiritual way out of his predicament.What transforms Lang’s film from merely good into outstanding, however, is its mise-en-scène, specifically Lang’s inventive storytelling devices – three potential press verdicts on Eddie’s guilt or innocence, a tickertape message and ‘wanted’ posters all borrowing from Lang’s silent films (and M). In addition, we get a near-endless stream of visual pyrotechnics – the brilliant 'deceptive’ robbery sequence being a highlight (and reminding me of Spione), plus multiple low angle, off-kilter and extended close-up shots, montages, shots through prison bars, reflections in water and stunning use of light and shadow.Lang, however, continues the social commentary by reminding us of what Eddie and Jo are up against via two stark moments – first, as Eddie realises one of the only times anyone (other than Jo) has shown him any compassion is when his life is saved to allow him to 'go to the chair’ and, second, as the camera looks into the eyes of the couple’s young son and we wonder whether he faces the same fate as Eddie. It’s powerful stuff in what is a hard-hitting, inventive piece of classic noir.

"You only live once" is here presented in a crisp, sharply contrasted print with an excellent audio level - quite simply, you could never see any black and white film of the 1930's in better quality than this. It makes the photography look stunning.I hadn't seen this in a long while, and I'd forgotten how good it is - it's usually "sold" as a crime melodrama, but it's equally one of classic cinema's great love stories. There is real chemistry between Henry Fonda and waif-like Sylvia Sydney and their tragic love story should move even the hardest of hearts. It's a story set against the background of depression America, and of one man's struggle, eventually lost, to go straight and throw off his criminal past. Henry Fonda is particularly effective and his defeat by a particularly cruel sequence of events mainly outside of his control is harrowing to watch.This is definitely a film which deserves better recognition and it's rarity now - it's not been on TV for many years - is quite a scandal really.I thoroughly enjoyed this - if you like 1930's drama you are in for a treat!

Henry Fonda commands our attention here with a riveting, almost method-style performance as Eddie Taylor, an essentially good kid driven to the bad by Depression-era poverty, social discrimination and sheer dumb luck. As the nice girl who stands by her man right to the end, Sylvia Sidney is less convincing. But her transition from naive optimism to despair as Eddie's attempts to go straight are sabotaged by prejudice and bad breaks, and finally to reckless joy as the couple embrace fate and go on the run, is undeniably touching. Fritz Lang's direction is generally taut, visually unobtrusive and noirishly atmospheric on occasion (during the fog-shrouded prison-break sequence, for example). He marshals the viewer's sympathies for the unlucky social outcasts to great effect, and gets in some well-aimed blows at hysterical public attitudes towards crime, an irresponsible populist press, and a self-serving penal and judicial system. The film does concede that sympathetic representatives of the system exist, but as isolated individuals they are incapable of making it more responsive to the needs of the downtrodden and unfortunate who are ultimately crushed by the relentless grinding of its impersonal gears. Only when they've completely rejected social conventions and embraced their outlaw status do Eddie and Joan find freedom and happiness, anticipating later 'counterculture' outlaw-couple classics like They Live By Night, Bonnie and Clyde and Thelma and Louise. Lang's America is here a nasty, cold, unforgiving place, thrown into stark relief by the passion and energy of Fonda and Sidney as the idealistic young couple who live life rather than stifle it. The splendid DVD transfer makes this classic statement of 1930s liberalism even more enjoyable.

Quite a good film actually. The script is good, and I believed in the characters.The audio interview with Fritz Lang is longer than the film itself.

You Only Live Once is a gritty black and white classic set during the Depression era and directed by the great Fritz Lang. It is a film that creates an air of such despair that one cannot help but have the ominous feeling that the two lovers in this film, Sylvia Sidney as Joan and Henry Fonda as Eddie, will meet an inevitable doom.The Henry Fonda character is somewhat maddening in this film. He is not an evil man, though his moral compass may be somewhat out of whack, but more an intelligent man making incredibly stupid choices. The choices he makes are so stupid that he simply digs himself deeper and deeper into a quagmire of doom, and he brings his wife with him. Joan's love for Eddie, which borders almost on obsession, blinds her totally as to what this all leads to and consequently to its tragic end.In fairness to Eddie, the film attempts to lead us to the conclusion that the economic despair and dead end future of the Depression leads people to make poor choices and affects their perspective of reality. Yet, Eddie is an intelligent man, and so is his wife Joan, but they cannot seem to get off the road to hell that they are on. Why? They are not vicious criminals or gangsters, yet they end up being hunted as such. Probably it is because Eddie ultimately could not accept the reality of his existence and the future that awaited him.By modern standards this film could come across as melodramatic rather than a love affair meeting a tragic end. However, the acting of the two principals, Sydney and Fonda, is very good and the film tells its story in an effective manner. It also gives us a fleeting feeling of the hard times of the Depression, especially if one found themselves at the lower end of the economic strata.