Description:
Depression-era Hollywood produced a slew of movies about sympathetic criminals victimized by an unfeeling society. No other has the power of Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once, the director's second American film and a masterpiece of fatalism. Henry Fonda is the convict released to a new life (encouraged to go straight, he growls, "I will if they let me"--not a hopeful note); Sylvia Sidney is his new bride, convinced of his essential goodness. Their homely dreams are crushed by a hostile world, which Lang's scrupulously controlled direction turns into a series of dead ends. In particular, the last half of the picture--a p
Depression-era Hollywood produced a slew of movies about sympathetic criminals victimized by an unfeeling society. No other has the power of Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once, the director's second American film and a masterpiece of fatalism. Henry Fonda is the convict released to a new life (encouraged to go straight, he growls, "I will if they let me"--not a hopeful note); Sylvia Sidney is his new bride, convinced of his essential goodness. Their homely dreams are crushed by a hostile world, which Lang's scrupulously controlled direction turns into a series of dead ends. In particular, the last half of the picture--a prison break and cross-country ramble inspired by Bonnie and Clyde--is an exceptionally intense downward spiral, swift with predestined momentum. While Fonda and Sidney are unforgettable in their echt-Thirties forms, Lang is the star, proving the director of M and Metropolis had lost none of his edge. --Robert Horton
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Manufacturer: Image Entertainment
Release date: 1 July 2003
Number of discs: 1
EAN: 0014381192223 UPC: 014381192223
Tags: Ben Hall (1), Stanley Blystone (1), William Pawley (1), Jean Stoddard (1), Henry Taylor (1), Wade Boteler (1), Walter De Palma (1), Margaret Hamilton (1), Chic Sale (1), Jean Dixon (1), Sylvia Sidney (1), Jerome Cowan (1), Henry Fonda (1), Guinn "Big Boy" Williams (1), Warren Hymer (1), William Gargan (1), Jack Carson (1), Barton Maclane (1), Directed By Fritz Lang (1), Jonathan Hale (1)
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