You Only Live Once (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Sep 22, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Fritz LangRelease Date(s)
1937 (July 30, 2025)Studio(s)
Walter Wanger Productions/United Artists (Imprint Films/Via Vision Entertainment)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: B+
- Audio Grade: A-
- Extras Grade: B+
Review
[Editor’s Note: This is a Region-Free Australian Blu-ray import.]
After a brilliant career making silent films including the classic Metropolis, director Fritz Lang fled Nazi Germany, emigrated to the United States, and got work in Hollywood with big stars. His first American film, Fury (1936) starring Spencer Tracy, was an auspicious beginning to his new life. His second American-made feature, You Only Live Once, is a gripping tale of guilt and innocence, rehabilitation, and the plight of ex-cons trying to go straight.
Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda) has been imprisoned three times for robbery. Now he’s being released, and the warden warns him that one more arrest will earn him a life sentence. Eddie plans to start a new life with his girlfriend, Joan Graham (Sylvia Sidney), who shares his hope for a bright future. Joan is the secretary to Taylor’s public defender, Stephen Whitney (Barton MacLane). Whitney gets Eddie a trucking job and the happy couple marry and start building a life together. Circumstances give Eddie’s boss an excuse to fire him. Swallowing his pride, he begs to get his job back but the boss refuses and Eddie knocks him out. Finding that no one will hire an ex-con, Eddie is tempted to rejoin his old bank robber buddies who are planning a new heist, but resists.
When the robbery of an armored truck and the killing of six guards makes newspaper headlines and there’s a photo of Eddie’s hat at the crime scene, the police assume Eddie was responsible. Although innocent, Eddie doesn’t trust the system, and he and Joan go on the run. Joan convinces him that going to the authorities is the best way to clear his name, but he’s arrested, found guilty at trial, and sentenced to the electric chair. Desperate, Eddie stages an escape, but just when it looks as if he’ll make it out, fate steps in with another cruel twist.
You Only Live Once is an unusual morality tale. Instead of the old theme of “crime doesn’t pay,” the film is saying that once a person has been in prison, he’s forever regarded as suspect and too often given no chance at a decent life. The life of Eddie and Joan spirals downward quickly after he’s denied a legitimate job and circumstantial evidence marks him as a bank robber and murderer. His trust in the system destroyed, he feels he can escape the electric chair only by turning to crime.
Fonda is convincing in a role that, in many ways resembles his Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, made three years later. Both are victims of society who want only to live peacefully and get legitimate work to support their families. Fonda conveys basic decency, speaks softly, and his eyes suggest a man beaten down yet determined to overcome societal prejudice. He moves slowly, as if measuring each step, and he has strong eye contact with his boss, even when he’s being reprimanded. Fonda elicits audience sympathy for Eddie partly from his star appeal, but mostly from a well-textured performance.
Sidney infuses Joan with an upbeat personality and a loyalty that often seems to go above and beyond. At first, her unequivocal love of Eddie seems foolhardy, but as the film progresses, her resolute determination reveals itself. When Sidney looks at Fonda, it’s with a combination of affection and “I will always support you.” Because her reactions speak eloquently, she doesn’t need dialogue to clarify her feelings. Sidney also conveys self-confidence and independence, as well as considerable emotional depth.
The latter part of the film takes on a Bonnie and Clyde feel as Joan and Eddie become fugitives from the law. Their hopes shattered, they’re victims of a community that believes “once a criminal, always a criminal.”
Lang provides his most ironic twist toward the end, just as things look hopeless for Eddie and Joan. The director conveys the feelings of the leads as well as the responses of the community around them, and he’s sympathetic to their plight as they become fugitives. There are elements is You Only Live Once of film noir, a genre to which Lang would contribute years later.
You Only Live Once was shot by director of photography Leon Shamroy on 35mm black & white film with spherical lenses and presented in the Academy aspect ratio of 1.37:1. The picture quality on the Blu-ray is very good and has been enhanced considerably according to the enclosed restoration comparison featurette. Shadows are incorporated dramatically in some scenes, as in a high-angle shot in which cell bars cast radiating shadows across the floor. There are well-delineated details, such as writing on the armored truck, patterns on Joan’s dresses, muck on the truck being pulled out of the water, and policemen’s uniforms. However, the overall look doesn’t come up to the standard of many recent releases of older films. The truck robbery sequence is covered from many angles, with mist from the gas grenades conveniently obliterating some of the action. The restoration improvements are subtle, with true black & white replacing a yellowing print and dialogue somewhat sharper. However, don’t expect pristine results. Any restoration is welcome, and this often-neglected motion picture was worthy of a spiffing up.
The soundtrack is English 2.0 mono LPCM. Optional English SDH subtitles are available. Dialogue is clear and distinct. Sound effects, dialogue, and music are well balanced. Driving rain, car engines, gunfire, an off-screen crash, a punch landing on a man’s face, and police sirens are among the film’s sound effects. Sound, in general, is typical of films from the 1930s and lacks the full dimension of later films.
Bonus materials on the Blu-ray release from Imprint Films include the following:
- Audio Interview with Fritz Lang (83:57)
- Interview with Author George M. Wilson (24:52)
- You Only Live Once: Production Takes From a Film in the Making (10:38)
- Restoration Comparison (5:12)
Audio Interview with Fritz Lang – This interview was conducted by Stanley Reed in 1962 at the National Film Theatre in conjunction with a screening of Metropolis. A Q & A is conducted and the questions come from a film-savvy audience. Lang discusses his career in Germany making silent films, how he came to America, and comments on a number of his American pictures. He contrasts the German and Hollywood film industries and claims he wasn’t happy in Hollywood because of interference by studio personnel. He talks about how the German film industry of the present day (1962) differs from that in the 1930s. Working in television was an eye opener for the director because of the speed with which filming was done. He talks about the kinds of stories that attract him, and his definition of “box office success,” which differed from that of studios. Lang believes violence is a form of drama if it’s used judiciously and not exploitatively. A film could take six to nine months to complete when pre-production, actual filming, and editing are taken into account. He believes the French are “more honest” in their depiction of sex scenes than American filmmakers.
Interview with George M. Wilson – Author Wilson provides a thorough overview of the career of Fritz Lang. Lang’s first American film was Fury (1936). In You Only Live Once, the main male character (Eddie) exhibits a “central ambiguity.” Did he or didn’t he commit the bank robbery? The robbery as shown on screen is vague, though it’s a “terribly rich sequence.” Lang incorporates a cinematic “sleight of hand” in terms of showing that event. There’s a lot of “odd perceptual manipulation.” A critical irony is discussed and how it affects the film’s finale.
You Only Live Once: Production Takes From a Film in the Making – This short film from the Museum of Modern Art Film Library is composed of takes from three different scenes from You Only Live Once. Clapboard markers are seen before each take. There’s considerable noise on the set prior to takes and actors are seen relaxing after each take. A fog machine fills the set for an atmospheric scene. Various camera angle takes of the bank robbery are shown and then the entire sequence, as it appears in the film, is shown.
Restoration Comparison – For the film’s restoration, 35mm archival film elements from the British Film Institute were obtained and 200 hours were spent “cleaning up” the film. Before and after shots are shown—before images on the left side of the screen, after images on the right. Blacks are richer and deeper, details are more pronounced, and truer gradations of the grayscale replace the yellowish original. Dirt specks, and light scratches were removed. Audio restoration comparisons reveal a muddiness in the original, crisper dialogue in the restoration.
You Only Live Once, an intriguing look at how fate and circumstances can result in disaster and tragedy, features solid performances by Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney. With a fast pace, the film builds suspense and contains surprises. Though the story is bleak and doesn’t fall into the 1930s Hollywood routine of making every ending happy, it has an honesty. Plots featuring criminal lovers on the lam would form the centerpiece of subsequent films, including the classics Gun Crazy, (1950), Badlands (1973), Natural Born Killers (1994) and, most notably Bonnie and Clyde (1967).
- Dennis Seuling