You Only Live Once

From the director of Metropolis comes this early film noir partly based on the legend of Bonnie and Clyde, though the violence is rather tame by comparison.

Starring Oscar-winning screen legend Henry Fonda as Eddie Taylor and doe-eyed Sylvia Sidney as Joan Graham – the woman who blindly loves him no matter what – this tale spells doom right from the outset.

Eddie is a three-time convict who’s just completed his third term for felony. On the day of his release, the well-meaning warden warns him that he’ll be imprisoned for life should he commit one more offence. Determined to turn his life around and make a new start with his devoted girlfriend Joan, all he wants is a decent job and a cosy home to call their own. Unfortunately things begin to crumble when Eddie loses his new job thanks to the prejudice of his employer, meaning he is in no position to keep up with the payment for their new home. As if the situation wasn’t desperate enough already, things get a lot worse when his hat, bearing his initials E.T. is found at the scene of a fatal bank robbery during which six policemen lost their lives. The hat is traced back to Eddie and he is sentenced to death, his claim that the hat got stolen on the day of the robbery is a claim no one believes him. On the day of the execution, a twist of fate reveals the real murderer but just when the execution is about to be called off, Eddie breaks free and in the process becomes a killer for real. As the pregnant Joan, who since has become his wife, and Eddie try to make it over the border in their car it becomes clearer by the hour that no happy end lies in store at the end of the journey.

This 1937 thriller was the second American film for German director Fritz Lang. Both Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney deliver bravura performances and the stark b/w photography adds a further feel of threat and tension.

DVD-Extras include ‘Introduction By George Wilson’, ‘Recorded audio interview with F. Lang at the NFT in 1962, and production notes.