Some films, like some books, are best enjoyed by the connoisseur, who can appreciate their part in the overall development of the genre rather than judging them solely on how well they stand up on their own. The Castle of Otranto was a seminal work in gothic fiction, but just the same I wouldn't recommend it as a book to be read for its own merits; while it introduced some fascinating themes and narrative devices that would later be used in classics like Dracula, as a book read on its own... it's pretty lousy. You're most likely wondering why I'm starting off a movie review with musings on gothic fiction. Well, You Only Live Once holds up about as well as an entertaining film in its own right as The Castle of Otranto does as an entertaining novel. That is, each undoubtedly has its merits, but they're not the kind of merits that will be apparent to a viewer (even an intelligent and perceptive one) who is looking for an artistic work that stands in a satisfying manner on its own.

You Only Live Once is one of the U.S. films made by the famous German director Fritz Lang, perhaps most well known for Metropolis (1927). As such, it most likely offers an additional level of interest to those who are familiar with Lang's work, or the state of the filmmaking art in the 1930s; however, by itself it doesn't offer much of an invitation to explore that era.

The linear plot is clearly not the primary attraction of the film: three-time criminal Eddie Taylor (Henry Fonda) gets out of his latest jail term early due to the efforts of his girlfriend Joan (Sylvia Sydney), only to find that it's easier to be a criminal than to make a living as an honest man. The highlight of the film, then, must be the character development, or character destruction as the case may be: we see Eddie at a crossroads, tempted to "go straight" with his devoted girl, but also pushed away from the right path by offensive prejudice against him as an ex-convict. (Of course, I found myself wondering what exactly he expected; it's made clear that he was guilty of the crimes that sent him to jail, and in fact only got out early through a series of special favors. After being in jail on three separate occasions, one would think he'd appreciate the difficulty in obtaining a truly clean slate.)

But even the character development doesn't really pull through as the reason to keep watching this film. Not enough of the characters is really revealed to make us care about them; all of them remain mostly as caricatures, boldly sketched outlines with not much detail inside. Henry Fonda does do a solid job of presenting the two sides of Eddie, the eager-to-please young lover and the surly ne'er-do-well, but even so, there's not much substance for the viewer to latch on to. And the less said about Joan, the better: there's only so much syrupy girl-perkiness I can take. Her blindness to the difficulties in a new life for Eddie could have been tragic, but as presented, just ends up being foolish.

In the end, what's left to appreciate in You Only Live Once? There's a certain theatrical quality to the performances and to the film overall that may appeal to viewers who are interested in seeing the characters more as abstract tragic figures rather than realistic ones. It didn't work for me, but that's not to say that it wouldn't work for anyone. Mostly, though, I think that You Only Live Once is a film best left to those who are intimately familiar with film history and its development in the 1930s, who can appreciate this film's place in the development of the genre. As for myself, I'm quite fond of The Castle of Otranto, but I certainly wouldn't expect it to get high marks from a modern book reviewer examining it on its own merits; so too with my take on You Only Live Once.

The DVD

Video

I do give some extra leeway to older films when it comes to evaluating image quality, and this certainly comes into play with the 66-year-old You Only Live Once. However, several flaws in the transfer bump the image score down significantly below average.

To start off with the positive aspects of the transfer, this black-and-white image is presented with satisfactory contrast and clarity, and noise and grain are also at a minimum.

What we get far too much of, however, is print flaws. A constant rain of tiny flecks and specks, both dark and light-colored, occurs throughout the film. I'm disappointed that more of an effort wasn't put forth to clean up the print for this DVD transfer, since the constant presence of the flaws is distracting. Warner's outstanding transfer of 1933's Little Women shows what can be done even with very old films, in contrast.

Another problem that I observed is the framing of the image. It's abundantly clear that the top of the image has been cut off: the opening credits are cropped at the top, and in many scenes in the film itself, the tops of the character's heads (or sometimes nearly their entire heads) are cut off. I'm not sure what exactly has been done to cause this problem; the film's original aspect ratio is 1.37:1, which means that the sides would have been cropped slightly for the aspect ratio of 1.33:1 that we get in this transfer. So how to explain the vertical cropping? I can't; I can only observe that it's rather disconcerting.

Video

The Dolby mono soundtrack doesn't have to do much work in this dialogue-heavy film, but unfortunately it's not very good at its job even so. A significant background hiss is present in the soundtrack, which adds to the overall muffled sound of the film. Dialogue is muddy-sounding and often very difficult to hear clearly. All in all, listening to You Only Live Once is something that requires an effort, and doesn't yield particularly good results.

Extras

Image presents You Only Live Once in the most basic of bare-bones presentations, with the opening menu doubling as the chapter selection screen as well. There are no special features.

Final thoughts

You Only Live Once is a film that is likely to appeal mainly to devoted fans of older films or of Fritz Lang's work, who will appreciate the film's place in cinema history, but even so, these viewers will only want to rent this DVD, due to the poor quality of the video and audio transfer. Most viewers will do best simply to skip it.