You Only Live Once (1937)

User Rating:

7.6/10   

Director:

Fritz Lang

Writers:

Gene Towne (screenplay) &
C. Graham Baker (screenplay)

Release Date:

29 January 1937 (USA)

Genre:

Film-Noir | Crime | Drama

Tagline:

He robbed... kidnapped... he murdered... Because of the love of one woman!

Plot:

Joan is the secretary to the public defender in a large city. She is in love with a career criminal named Eddie...

Plot Keywords:

Secretary | Prison | Circumstantial Evidence | Truck Driver | Electric Chair

Cast

Sylvia Sidney	...	Joan Graham Taylor
Henry Fonda	...	Eddie Taylor
Barton MacLane	...	Stephen Whitney
Jean Dixon	...	Bonnie Graham
William Gargan	...	Father Dolan
Jerome Cowan	...	Dr. Hill
Charles 'Chic' Sale	...	Ethan (as Chic Sale)
Margaret Hamilton	...	Hester
Warren Hymer	...	Buggsy
Guinn 'Big Boy' Williams	...	Rogers (misspelled Roger in closing credits) (as Guinn Williams)
John Wray	...	Warden Wheeler
Walter De Palma	...	Monk Mendall

Also Known As:

Three Time Loser (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

86 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Recording Sound System)

Certification:

New Zealand:M | Australia:M | Finland:K-16 (1960) | Finland:(Banned) (1937) | USA:Approved (PCA #2944) | USA:Passed (National Board of Review)

Company:

Walter Wanger Productions

Trivia:

A cast list with character names in the Fritz Lang papers at USC includes the following actors, all of whom were not in the viewed print: John Beck, Harry Bernard, Dorothea Wolbert (People in post office), Walter Soderling (Man in teller's cage), Frank Hammond (Lounger in store) and Russ Powell (Sheriff in store). It is not known if scenes with these actors were shot at all, or just deleted from the released print.

Quotes:

Joan Graham: Anywhere's our home. On the road. Out there on a cold star. Anywhere's our home.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Going Hollywood: The '30s (1984)

Soundtrack:

A Thousand Dreams of You

Nice cinematography, but plot holes make it a little annoying

This is one of the lesser known Fritz Lang flicks, and is a good representative of its era : it basically is about how blood-thirsty society misjudges and mistreats some of its members, "making them murderers" (my favorite one of that kind must be a little later "The Talk of the Town" with Cary Grant).

You can see why Lang is regarded as one of the masters of German Expresionism - some shots are really weird (check the shot of the courthouse somewhere in the beginning of the movie) and he uses strange camera angles, which will later be repeated in many film-noirs.

Unfortunately the film suffers from several plot holes. It is not really clear how the gun ends up on Taylor's hospital bed, etc. But I can recommend the movie despite its shortcomings. If you're a Fritz Lang fan you musn't miss it. If you're a film-noir fan, you shouldn't miss it because of some of his elements that will be found is such masterpieces as "The Scarlet Street" or "The Big Heat". If you're a movie fan in general you are strongly advised to see it, and you will not waste the 85 minutes of your life.