You Only Live Once (1937)

Directed by Fritz Lang. Starring Henry Fonda, Sylvia Sidney, Barton MacLane, Jerome Cowan, William Gargan, Jean Dixon, Chic Sale, Margaret Hamilton, Warren Hymer.

Proto-noir of ex-con Fonda struggling against the system designed to grind him into the dirt and an inescapable destiny that spells doom no matter what he does. One of Lang’s best American films has a few of the stylish touches he’s known for (e.g., jail cell shadows enclosing Fonda’s figure like he’s ensnared in a spiderweb), but otherwise presents somewhat-dated material for a formula melodrama. The circumstances where Fonda inexorably marches toward a hostile escape from his death sentence, however, shudder with memorable anxiety. Sidney plays the “woman who waited” that is now forced to go on the lam with her framed hubby. Though C. Graham Baker and Gene Towne’s screenplay is credited as an original, it was inspired by novelist Ben Anderson’s fictional retelling of the Bonnie and Clyde exploits. Not followed by a sequel called You Only Live Twice (that would be a James Bond picture).

77/100