You and Me (1938) (Region B) (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Nov 14, 2024
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Fritz LangRelease Date(s)
1938 (September 23, 2024)Studio(s)
Paramount Pictures (Indicator/Powerhouse Films)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A
- Audio Grade: A
- Extras Grade: A-
Review
[Editor’s Note: This is a Region B-locked British Blu-ray import.]
Genuinely strange, You and Me (1938) is a romantic comedy-drama-gangster-quasi-musical directed by Fritz Lang with music by Kurt Weill. Visually, at times it resembles Lang’s classic M (1931) or one of his Dr. Mabuse films more than it does a ‘30s Hollywood musical. It stars the seemingly mismatched Sylvia Sidney and George Raft, and was one of the last NRA (National Recovery Act)-influenced films, operating from an outrageous premise. Yet, somehow, the film is pretty entertaining and engaging with lots of charm. A major box-office flop that even Lang didn’t care for, it’s better than its reputation suggests.
Mr. Morris (Harry Carey), the fatherly owner of the Macys-like Morris Department Store, employs parolees and ex-cons, giving them a chance for rehabilitation denied them almost everywhere else. One of these is Joe Dennis (Raft), a model employee exemplifying the program’s success, but he decides to resign and move to California. That’s because he’s in love with sales clerk Helen Roberts (Sidney), a co-worker he’s fallen in love with, yet feels unworthy given his dark past, despite Joe having completed both his prison sentence and the terms of his parole. Unbeknownst to Joe, Helen is herself on parole, a secret she keeps from Joe.
But at the bus station Joe has a change of heart when Helen proposes to him. They marry that very night, Joe moving into her apartment. Under the terms of Helen’s parole, however, she’s not allowed to marry, forcing her to continue her deception, later falsely claiming Mr. Morris disapproves of co-workers tying the knot. Joe, angered by Helen’s attempt to hide her past from him, begins slipping backward, agreeing to join a plan by gangster Mickey (Barton MacLane) to rob the Morris Department Store blind.
The picture went through a long and convoluted development, initially with Norman Krasna both writing and directing. When Carole Lombard expressed interest in co-starring with Raft, Krasna was out as director and the project stalled for many months until producer B.P. Schulberg reactivated the project, now with Sylvia Sidney co-starring with Raft, and Lang directing. It was Lang who brought in Kurt Weill, and together they give You and Me a decidedly German feel.
This is clear from the opening, a wonderful montage set to Weill’s Song of the Cash Register, showing off the department store’s products, luxurious goods way beyond the means of the average Depression-hit American. Later, when Joe falls in with fellow co-workers/ex-cons—played by familiar faces like Roscoe Karns, George E. Stone, Warren Hymer, Adrian Morris (looking like John Candy here), and Robert Cummings in an early role—plotting to rob the department store, there’s a strange quasi-musical number as they look back fondly on prison life. During the robbery, Lang employs striking camera angles and editing techniques that remind one of the Berlin criminal underworld hunting for the child-killer in M. The film is also like a fantasy version of Raft’s subsequent Warner Bros. melodrama Invisible Stripes (1939), with Raft again playing an ex-con facing a much more realistically harsh world of discrimination.
The romantic aspects of You and Me work surprisingly well, and are quite sweet, actually. Conventional wisdom is that Raft was a rather stiff, limited actor, but he had an undeniable screen presence and was a better actor than most would grant him. Sidney was nearing the end of a decade of stardom playing working class heroines, but like Raft soldiered on until the end of her life, finding late-career success in movies like Beetlejuice as well as on television and Broadway. One aspect of the already credibility-bursting screenplay that bothered me was Joe’s reaction to learning Helen withheld from him her parolee status. It seems like he’s angry primarily because she lied to him, rather than because she’s an ex-con like himself, but the film isn’t entirely clear about this. It doesn’t seem to be suggesting that he once believed he wasn’t good enough for her and now that she not good enough for him, but the script is a little murky here.
Conversely, the absurdity of paternal, empathetic Mr. Morris, well-played by Harry Carey, laying it on the line for a bunch of jailbirds becomes wildly absurd following the attempted store robbery (instead of having them all arrested, he orders them to report to work the following morning), giving way to an even more outrageous scene where Helen, using a blackboard and schooling the would-be thieves like children, demonstrates mathematically how “crime does not pay.” Beguilingly unreal, it would be interesting to know how 1938 audiences reacted to this scene particularly.
Powerhouse’s 1.37:1 standard frame Blu-ray, licensed from Universal, looks outstanding, with excellent sharpness and inky blacks. I’ve not seen Kino’s 2023 Blu-ray of the same title, but would guess it’s drawn from the same 2K video transfer. Audio-wise, the LPCM 1.0 mono is also good and supported by optional English subtitles. Region “B” locked.
Supplements consist of a new audio commentary by writer Tony Rayns and two new video essays; Lucy Bolton on Sylvia Sidney and David Huckvale on Kurt Weill. A trailer and image gallery are also included. Not carried over from the Kino Lorber Blu-ray is an audio commentary with Simon Abrams.
For this review, we received a check disc only. The booklet packaged with the final release includes an essay by Farran Smith Nehme, an archival interview with Fritz Lang conducted by Peter Bogdanovich, and an archival interview with Norman Krasna.
You and Me isn’t great and anything but typical, but it has a weird charm about it, its disparate components quite absurd at times but the final blending is oddly agreeable. Recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV