German director Fritz Lang was one of the great artists of silent film. Even those who don’t know much about movies before the sound era have probably at least heard about his science fiction epic Metropolis, from 1927. In his time he was more renowned for his innovative crime and espionage films like Dr. Mabuse and Spies. But with the rise of Hitler to power, Lang saw the writing on the wall and left for Paris, where he made one movie and then was discovered and signed by MGM in 1934 to come to Hollywood. At first he had a hard time of it. Metro dropped him after one film, and it took a while to become established. His second film in America, and one of my favorite movies ever, was You Only Live Once, from 1937, produced by an independent, Walter Wanger and distributed by United Artists.
Henry Fonda plays Eddie Taylor, a released convict, in love with his defense lawyer’s secretary Joan, nicknamed Jo, and played by Sylvia Sidney. Eddie tries to go straight, but meets with rejection everywhere, and ends up being framed for murder. Eventually he and Jo go on the run with the law in relentless pursuit.
This movie communicates to me, as much or more than any other, the feeling of living during the Great Depression. The bewilderment and loss of faith in authority, the fatalistic sense that no matter what you do, society will push you down, all reflect the darker side of the popular mood during that era. Although Fonda’s character is well-meaning, he’s no hero by any stretch. His short temper and desperation are all too human, while the world around him is mostly brutal and uncaring.
Henry Fonda hadn’t reached stardom yet—Sylvia Sidney was billed above him in the credits. And, as he confessed later, he hated working for Lang, a perfectionist with a reputation for being overly demanding of his actors. Nevertheless, I think this is one of Fonda’s more remarkable performances, with a hardness to it that is missing from most of his good guy roles. The story was based in part on the criminals Bonnie and Clyde, especially in the sequences where the couple is on the road trying to get to the Canadian border to escape capture—the difference being that these two are essentially innocents who are trapped into their deeds by awful circumstances.
In this film, Fritz Lang once again demonstrates his mastery of the camera as an instrument for the portrayal of extreme feelings. His minimalist aesthetic, and his use of shadow and expressive camera angles, are employed to maximum dramatic effect. There are hokey elements too, typical of 1930s crime drama, such as the kindly Catholic priest who tries to save the Fonda character from himself, or the heroine’s tough, sensible sister cautioning her against her involvement with the ex-con. But the director’s style manages to transcend these limitations of genre. I wish I could say that it boosted Lang’s career, but unfortunately it was a bomb, a total box office failure. Eventually, however, starting in the 1940s, Lang did made his mark on Hollywood.
You Only Live Once, with its doom-laden atmosphere, foreshadowed the post-war American style we have come to know as “film noir,” and is now widely considered a classic. As usual, Fritz Lang was ahead of his time.
