YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE
dir. Fritz Lang, 1937
86 mins. United States.

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3 - 7:30 PM
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 - 5 PM
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24 - 7:30 PM

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Fritz Lang’s 1937 YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (his third film after fleeing Nazi Germany, and just his second American movie) is a complex social melodrama, tightly disguised as a bleak noir about star-crossed lovers on the run. Henry Fonda stars as Eddie Taylor, a jailbird who’s just been released from prison (for the third time) with desperate hopes to finally turn his life around. Unfortunately for Taylor, Lang’s fatalistic noir unravels as a thorough critique of an American judicial system that consistently sets its subjects up for failure. In a country that imprisons more people per capita than any other in the world, Lang’s social protest film is as poignant today as it was when James Baldwin praised it in 1976. With expressive black & white cinematography and a harrowing performance from Sylvia Sidney, YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE is a remarkable career achievement and as James Baldwin reminds us, Lang “never succeeded quite so brilliantly.”

From I HAVE THE RIGHT TO LIVE: A Film Noir Double Bill.