You Only Live Once Reviews

American

Not what you'd expect from this director. He obviously had to please his American employers, so this is tosh compared to what he'd done in Germany before.

over heated melodrama

After seeing his silent classics it was a little bit disappointing to see this hollywood vehicle. It tries for gritty but does not really achieve that, Fonda is not truly believable as a criminal (compared to his Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath) and the girl mainly seems confused. Some excellent set design and cinematography provide compensation and you can see it as an influence on later directors such as Arthur Penn.

[Highly rated reviewer]

Guilty until proved innocent

This film has divided critical opinion. Some see it as an out-dated, overwrought melodrama. Others as a compelling indictment of a criminal justice system that condemns an innocent man to death, then fails to deal compassionately when fateful events spiral out of control. I am firmly in the second camp and after several viewings I am still amazed at the way Fritz Lang has assembled his pictorial details: what an astonishing array of images. The acting of Fonda and Sydney could scarcely have been bettered and there are many scenes that are very moving and heart-rending. Some may point to the almost exclusive use of studio sets as an example of lack of sophistication in the film-making. For me, this heightens the enclosed world in which this tragedy unfolds. This may be the Hollywood of the 1930's but the messages of this film are timeless and universal. So forget the technical advances of our digital age and let the power of this great little film enter your heart.

Open The Gates!

Fritz Lang's classic film of 3-time loser Eddie Taylor, his escape from jail and becoming a fugitive with his wife has influenced all subsequent films like Bonnie and Clyde. The major flaw is making Fonda and Sydney seem like a middle class couple down on their luck rather than working-class victims of the depression era. Lang's telling of the story by set-piece scenes like the armoured car robbery make this a must for all fans of the noir and crime genres.

Customer Review

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.

[Highly rated reviewer]

If you're here, then it may be for you . . .

Having grown up watching him in so many antithetical films (i.e., Grapes of Wrath, Yours Mine and Ours, Sex and the Single Girl and On Golden Pond to name a few), it's easy to forget how often and well does Henry Fonda play the wrongly-accused.

Fonda does feel both mis-cast and believable (pardon the contradiction) as the hapless Eddie, and Sylvia Sidney is excellent as a sort of unwitting Bonnie to his Clyde. I thought this would be a rather quiet plod-along film, but instead I soon became embroiled in the characters and was kept me on the edge of my proverbial seat throughout; it's entirely possible I shouted aloud at least once 'Eddie, no, don't do it!'.

The Fritz Lang effect shines through in some of the beautiful set-ups and camera work, from the first shots of the prison, the build-up and execution of the armoured car robbery and especially later when Fonda's awaiting his last meal with the light unassumingly drifting through the room - pure magic. I think I may have even ooohed and cooohed aloud at that one.

Other reviewers have touched on aspects such as certain elements of the Depression not being captured and {yawn} the picture not being the Lang of Metropolis - but I shall leave them to it, and simply say that if you’re the type of person who’s landed on this page in the first place, then add it to your list.