A waste of 90 minutes of my life

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

People writing most of the reviews must have seen a different movie than I did. This thing is God awful... I had a lot of fun laughing during the first 15 minutes in scenes that are meant to show the callous cruelty of the workaday world....the boss who fired Fonda...the Hotel managers wife etc...(I recognized her from Laurel and Hardy movies). In fact this movie would have made an excellent black comedy.But then the plot gets loose and fragments with holes you can drive through...or rather get a gun through. The metal detector gave away Sidney on the way into the cell with gun but is silent when Sidney walks back out still with the gun. The "metal detector" looks like a one of those automatic door openers using photo cells from the 50s.... and on and on this thing goes loose and boring... Lang has a couple Citizen Kane moments with good scary shadow work but this is the exception rather than the rule in this decidedly low budget looking film.The writing is terrible... the story unbelievable in the extreme...and then gets drawn out and boring and corny towards the end. Lang can pull off great movies if they let him....that was probably the problem here the studio wanted a heart throbber with violins playing and Lang liked the noir scenes with gas masks and murdered (thank heavens!) priests... I think that is probably over analysis giving a low rent story too much credit..this movie simply flops.Sylvia Sydney looks 10 years older than Fonda...but I looked it up to see = she was 27 when this was made and Fonda 32. She is a rather unattractive woman...I liked her hard sister better and best of all the Motel Manager's wife from Laurel and Hardy movies.Do not recommend unless you can treat the whole thing as a black comedy.

Fritz Lang is a director with an immensely big reputation, which has everything to do with his movies "Metropolis" and "M" but in all truth and honesty, most of his other movies were were merely average ones. This one included. It's a good movie but nothing about this movie makes it a special one or a must-see really.It has a decent enough story but definitely not a solid or credible one. The movie is being a bit melodramatic and forced with all of its events and emotions but then again, this really wasn't that uncommon for an 1930's movie. I liked some of the places the movie was taken its story but then the movie would do something stupid and silly again, which took me out of the movie and prevented me from connecting to its characters and everything that is going on with them.The movie ultimately tries to present itself as a love story, with only one big crime and dramatic twist to it. The combination of all these elements does work out well enough and also original. It still makes "You Only Live Once" definitely a good watch and for its time it also really isn't a bad attempt. The story works sort of renewing and original and also the twists and turns in it make this far from the typical genre attempt, from about that same time period this movie got made in.It takes some good approach with its directing and cinematography, which at times make you forget you are watching an '30's movie here. The movie can feel quite modern and raw at times, also because it's not a movie that is constantly busy with trying to wrap things up needly and create an happy ending for all of its main characters.The movie features a young Henry Fonda, with still lots of hair. It's one of his earliest movie roles and funny thing about him is that he never really played secondary characters but always had been the main lead, ever since the start of his acting career. And why not. He definitely had the right required skills and also looks for it and he also was quite good in this movie. Even though the story gets melodramatic at times, the actors still aren't overacting and keep things as real as possible. It's the reason why "You Only Live Once" still works out good and effectively, for most part.A good movie to watch but at the same time also one you could easily do without ever seeing.7/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Consider; the lead is a male criminal, or ex con. His fiancé/wife is naive enough to believe he "can change"/"has changed", honest religious figure, a jail break plot, misunderstandings and misperceptions of the human condition, presumption of guilt/innocence weighed on pre-cinematic thinking scale.All those factors add up to a film that would not be a winner at today's box office. Even though it has every element of today's social stupidity, only reinforced with alleged scientific understanding of the human mind, the film would get shelved as an unhealthy downer for the domestic market. If someone tried to make it, they would have to get rid of or rework the scenes with the clergy. Rework the prison scenes, and just about everything else to make it more appealing and couple friendly to garner the date film market.A married couple on the outs with John Law? A normal married couple that tried to do all the right things, but still found themselves on the receiving end of stupidity? Say it ain't so! And yet I can see that response being tossed in the face of numerous would be directors who pitched this script. Reason; no one wants to see a downer of a film. That's what we have documentaries for.I think of this film, and think of my own life and how other people's stupidity has come to effect my own, and how I tried to address it through proper channels, and how nothing but unmitigated disaster followed. One gives serious consideration if the gates will open. But then one reminds oneself that this is what high priced mercenaries (i.e. lawyers) are for. So a kind of settled brow comes and eases onto a man's demeanor.But it doesn't detract from the fact that today we have miscarriages of justice based on the most moronic of thought processes conceived by the human mind. And Fonda's character suffers for it.It's not a film for the feint of heart, and it will lead you down one road, only to take you on another. It's that kind of a film. Hope abounds. And that's perhaps the one thing the couple has left, for mankind and all their concepts of justice and medicine cannot help them.See it once.

Joan Graham is the secretary for Stephen Witney, an honest and dedicated public defender, who succeeds in doing something he would almost rather not do: get Joan's sweetheart, Eddie Taylor, out of prison. Eddie is a good man, but Joan's sister, Bonnie, and Stephen both agree that he is no good for Joan. Eddie was born trouble. Joan and Eddie get married and set out to prove the naysayers wrong. Eddie gets a good, steady job as a truck driver; but a series of disasters sends his life spiraling out of control and the fiercely loyal Joan's along with it.Fritz Lang directs this hard-hitting melodrama and, as always, fills it with striking images. The shot of Eddie (Henry Fonda) in his cell, with the shadows of the bars reaching out to meet the bored and uninterested guard, stands out. The shots of a wide-eyed and desperate Fonda asking Joan (Sylvia Sidney) for a gun are a triumph for Lang, Fonda and Lang's cinematographer, Leon Shamroy. Lang also gets excellent work out of his editor, Daniel Mandell, who helps Lang to juxtapose images in a suggestive way, e.g. the shots of the frogs with shots of Joan and Eddie.Standing back from the film and looking at is as a whole makes it something of a marvel. We begin with light comedy, proceed to an adorable romance and then follow the characters as their lives - and the film itself - grows steadily darker.