Fritz Lang

You Only Live Once 75th Anniversary Fritz Lang

Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney play ill-fated lovers in Fritz Lang's fatalistic psychological thriller, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE. The film opens as Joan (Sidney), a secretary in the public defender's office, excitedly awaits the release of her thrice-convicted criminal lover Eddie (Fonda). The two try to build a life together, despite the scepticism of Joan's sister and boss, and succeed for a while until destiny seems to take control. Eddie butts up against a society that refuses to give ex-cons a second chance and tumbles back into contact with old gang connections. When he winds up back in jail--this time with a death sentence--he once again escapes only to commit a murder in the process and take Joan and their new baby with him as he wildly flees. The images are stark, as Lang darkly portrays the doomed couple's headlong descent through a cold society and the inescapable forces of fate. The suspense runs high and the cinematography is sweeping as the camera follows the couple from their ramshackle honeymoon to their desperate getaway and ultimately to their tragically climactic demise. Fritz Lang's obsession with fate and the moral dualism of society and its criminal underground as depicted in his earlier films, DESTINY, M, and FURY, is precisely expressed anew in this brutal and uncompromising film that paved the way for BONNIE AND CLYDE and NATURAL BORN KILLERS.