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You Only Live Once

You Only Live Once

List Price: $19.99
Your Price: $17.99
Product Info Reviews

Features:
  • Black & White


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 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
© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates