On the first Friday of every month, this column by critic Joshua Polanski will feature a short review or essay on a film directed by Fritz Lang (1890-1976), the great Austrian “Master of Darkness.” Occasionally (but not too occasionally), Fritz on Fridays will also feature interviews and conversations with relevant critics, scholars and filmmakers about Lang’s influence and filmography. 

If you were to put all of Fritz Lang’s films together and make a new one from the aggregate, that film would very closely resemble 1937’s You Only Live Once. In his second film made in the United States and considered by many to be one of the last great films of his career, he gives the quintessential Langian film. James Baldwin, an American intellectual who requires no introduction, said: “He never succeeded quite so brilliantly again.” The more energy I invest into Lang, the more I realize someone is always saying this about one film or the next. But in a way, it does feel a bit different than the films that follow it. 

Henry Fonda is Eddie Taylor, a reformed ex-convict trying to make things straight in his new life. He’s married to the beautiful and patient Joan “Jo” Graham (Sylvia Sidney). Their honeymoon location stuns Eddie with its beauty, and he innocently asks Jo how she found such a perfect place. Her response — that she had three years to find the spot thanks to his prison stay — stings Eddie like alcohol on a fresh wound. Even his paradise finds itself stained with regret. 

The American tradition of reprobative and retributive penal philosophy troubles Eddie’s attempt to live an honest life and pushes the ex-convict into difficult situations. As he finds himself blamed for a crime he didn’t commit, his own ideas of self-determination shatter and he becomes the murderer that the criminal justice system has educated him to be. Apparently finding loose inspiration in the story of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, the couple takes to the road in search of that elusive freedom.

You Only Live Once also intrigues as a record of film history. The picture originally featured much more intense violence, particularly in the bank robbery scene with the gas-masked figures killing 12 people. However, Hays Code censor Joseph I. Breen demanded cuts, to which (as it would appear from his notes) the film eventually succumbed. Breen’s notes, preserved by the Motion Picture Association of America’s Production Code Administration records, report a rejection of the film. The reason? “Morally unsuitable.” One wonders how much more bleak the final film would have been without the forced trim. Perhaps this also contributed to its meek performance at the box office. (According to Walter Wanger in Hollywood Independent, the film lost $48,045.) Then again, 1937 was the peak of the Great Depression and maybe people just had better things to spend their money on — you know, useless things like bread and water.

The cinematography from Leon Shamroy (1963’s Cleopatra, 1968’s Planet of the Apes) adds some studio elegance to Lang’s typically darkly artful compositions, and that comes across in Eddie and Jo’s honeymoon scene as the couple overlooks peaceful frogs in a small pond. The filmmakers present a large portion of their special moment in an upside-down reflection of the water’s surface. The shiny and moving surface-level reflection gets across the fragility of the marriage, and the subsequent rippling of the water (after a frog jumps in it) reinforces this instability. In most films, this would win the prize for the best shot; in a Fritz Lang film, it’s a minor shot.

The climax, a hostage standoff at a prison, matches this elegance with the providential to create a foggy environment that replicates something of a metaphysical dual in the afterlife. These are destinies at play, and the cinematography and production design lean into those stakes. It’s remarkable. The high contrast and minimally visible design stand unruffled by the almost 90 years that have passed since its release. For the artistic achievement of the climax alone, You Only Live Once is essential Lang.

It might also be one of the Austrian émigré’s most American films. Our prisoners play baseball and guns are easily accessible, and what’s more American than guns and baseball? More insightfully, Lang’s finger is on the pulse of our morally bankrupt justice system and collective fondness for rogue individuals violently resisting authoritarian agents of the state. In no small way, and thanks to Lang himself, Bonnie and Clyde have clung to the American cultural consciousness long enough to be properly considered mythological figures. Their mere presence here, albeit in completely fictional analogs, primes a response straight from the belly of self-made national fantasies. Can we escape fate? Can we outrun destiny? Or, to reform the question through a reworded American expression: Without Liberty, can one actually live a Life in pursuit of Happiness?

Joshua Polanski is a freelance film and culture writer who writes regularly for the Boston Hassle and has contributed to the Bay Area Reporter, In Review Online, and Off Screen amongst other places. His interests include the technical elements of filmmaking & exhibition, slow & digital cinemas, and East Asian & Middle Eastern film. He is currently based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.