Dir. Fritz Lang USA 1938
My final cinema seminar at NYU was a comparative directors course on the work of Fritz Lang and Luis Bunuel. Both were prominent European directors who were forced out of their own countries and continued to make films in America (or Mexico in Bunuel's case). Both were know for their striking visual styles and incisive social commentary. Of the two, I vastly preferred Lang's angular expressionism and pulpy narratives to Bunuel's dreamy surrealism and bizarre storytelling devices. Although he will always be remembered (along with F.W. Murnau) as the pioneer of German Expressionism, Fritz Lang actually had a much lengthier career as a workhorse of the Hollywood studio system, directing one film a year from 1936 to 1957. These ran the gamut from social awareness pictures to crime dramas to westerns to noirs. Although the quality and importance of his American work varied, his auteurial stamp (bold, expressive shadows, shots of staring eyes, the steep price of vengeance, etc.) is clear, at least in all the examples I've seen. The Film Forum on Houston Street was showing a Lang in Hollywood series for the past few weeks and I caught a double feature at the tail end. I'd seen You Only Live Once in the aforementioned class. I was seeing You & Me for the first time.
You Only Live Once stars Henry Fonda as Eddie Taylor, a small time crook just released from prison with the assistance of his fiance Jo Graham (Sylvia Sydney) and her boss, a sympathetic city attorney (Barton MacLane). Despite his attempts to live honestly, Eddie finds himself framed for a bank robbery and facing the electric chair. Following a violent escape from prison, Eddie and Jo go on the lam, condemning themselves to a life of crime and violence on the road.
At a punchy 76 minutes (there's apparently a more violent 90 minute cut somewhere out there), You Only Live Once is narratively and structurally similar to Gun Crazy or, most obvioiusly, Bonnie And Clyde. But whereas the protagonists of those two films are genuine criminals and psychopaths, Eddie and Jo are simply good people pushed too far by circumstance and injustice. Despite its occassionally hokey plotting and some very on-the-nose dialogue (even by the standards of the era), the film does a good job of portraying many of the ills that normal people were forced to endure toward the end of the Great Depression (seriously, like, every ill you can imagine. The string of bad luck these two have strains even my generous credulity). The film pull as few punches as it's time allowed, featuring a number of scenes that would be bleak even by today's standards. Notable moments include Jo sucking milk from a punctured tin can, the two of them raising an infant in a bullet-riddled car and a pair of gas station attendees robbing the register and blaming it on them after they've stolen some gas and driven off.
Thematically, this film is very similar to Lang and Sydney's previous collaboration, 1936's Fury, which was also a powerful tract on the injustice suffered by individuals when they are faced with indifferent institutions and mob mentality. Sylvia Sydney is wonderful here as the wide-eyed, always encouraging Jo, who believes the best of Eddie and is willing to follow him into Hell with a naiveté and optomism that's always understandable and never annoying or ridiculous. Less impressive is Henry Fonda, who is more than capable when it comes to portraying Eddie as a desparing, down-on-his-luck shell of a man, but less convincing when he's required to appear dangerous or violent. I suppose that's the point ultimately, given that Eddie is by nature not dangerous or violent, but I found myself struggling to take him seriously whenever he was waving a gun around.
I was much more invested in You & Me, a film that addresses very similar issues, but does so with a bit more levity and charm. The film features George Raft and Sylvia Sydney as Joe and Helen, a pair of employees at a department store with a kindly manger (Harry Carey) who goes out of his way to hire reformed cons who have trouble finding work. One of these cons is Joe, a decent man with impulse control problems who manages to ground himself in a relationship with Helen. Initially told that they need to hid their marriage due to store policy, it is eventually revealed that Helen herself is an ex-con who knows that their marriage is a violation of both their paroles (is that still true? Seems kind of Draconian). While Joe begins to grow suspicious of Helen's behavior, he also finds himself being drawn back into a life of crime by his old gang members, who claim to be the only family he'll ever truely have.
It would be a stretch to call this film a comedy, but it features plenty of witty dialogue and doesn't really get serious until the back half. It also features two extremely bizarre pseudo-musical sequences that were very interesting, but felt extremely out of place in an otherwise grounded film. Beyond that though, I was pretty charmed by this film overall. It begins as a comedy of errors (of sorts) that seemlessly segues into an effective social drama without feeling tonally imbalanced. It's got a strong supporting cast and some clever dialogue, some of it a bit risque for the time (nothing like gregarious Jewish landladies for some inappropriate humor, amirite?)
What really sold this movie for me, however, was the pairing of George Raft and Sylvia Sydney. I've never been a huge George Raft fan, and this movie didn't quite convert me, but I was definitely the most enjoyable performance I've seen of his. Raft coasted for most of (if not all) his career by pretty much playing himself. Bogart and Cagney were able to fill same roles while having a lot more range as actors and thanks to bad career management and his own vanity, Raft popularity waned throughout the 40's while his fellow tough-guy actors went on to win Oscars (Raft actually inadvertantly launched Bogart to stardom by passing on the lead roles in High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon). His role in this film allows him to stretch a bit, incorporating his usual act into a more broadly comedic role. Surprisingly, while I found his dramatic performance in the film to be a bit stiff, early scenes of him joking around with Sydney while having a night out on the town are some of the best in the whole movie. His personality bleeds into the performance to such a degree that some of the dialogue feels as though it might be ad-libbed (although that doesn't really seem like something Fritz Lang would have allowed).
Sylvia Sydney, who plays a very passive second to Henry Fonda in You Only Live Once, is given much more to work with in this film as a second protagonist alongside Raft. Savvier and more down-to-earth than Jo, Helen is a proactive, intelligent character and allows Sydney to play both the sexy flapper and the cute girl-next-door personas that she combined so well. She's rapidly overtaking Priscilla Lane as my favorite underrated early film actress.
I'm happy to finally be getting to the Film Forum on a semi-regular basis. Hopefully I'll be able to check out some other cool things in the coming months. The double features especially, are tailor made for this blog.
UP NEXT: Winter's Bone and The Kids Are Alright as part of my 2010 Oscar catchup.
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