Moviecut—You and Me

source: You and Me

You and Me

Often Lang is able to interject his paranoid vision of the world -- with strange camera angles, romantic intrigues and suspicions, and farce. But just as frequently one feels the prudishness of thirties' Hollywood, forcing love, mercy, and optimism to rise implausibly from the traps the characters set for themselves. By turns subversive and banal. Worth seeing.

" . . . it MIGHT fill him up for 15 minutes, but if you provide the same gent with a rod (plus plenty of ammo) he'll never go hungry again." YOU AND ME bears out this Pearl of Wisdom, as lowly wage slaves learn that they can attain far more bottles of "expensive" perfume through exercising their Second Amendment Rights rather than by pinching pennies on the pittance Capitalist Crime Lords deem fit to "pay" them. So enjoy YOU AND ME, and then support your local chapter of BANGS (Broke Americans Need Gun Stamps).

"You and me" begins a bit like "You only live once".It's the problem of reintegration of ex-cons .The first scene when Sylvia Sydney refuses to become an informer speaks volumes about her own past -which anyway would remain rather vague-.George Raft (miscast ;he is better in true films noirs) is California dreamin' but he chooses to stay to marry Sydney -who is not allowed to,cause she's still on parole,but he does not know it. Coming after "You only live once" and "fury" this is a rather disappointing work by highly talented Fritz Lang.There are only,IMHO,two good moments in the whole movie: the sequence when the ex-cons remember their time in jail,an unusually inventive way of introducing a flashback;then Sydney,in the department store,proving arithmetically (you read well) that crime does not pay.It doesn't for sure.

This is one of the best film starring George Raft. Many character actors also show up at different parts of the films such as Greta Granstedt, Ellen Drew, George E. Stone, Bob Cummings, Barton MacLane, and others. Although the film gets a bit campy at times, this is first class entertainment. And Sylvia Sidney is a real peach !!! I am a great fan of the late director Fritz Lang. My very favorite film from him is the science fiction classic "Metropolis". A close second is "Frau I'm Monde". Other great films are "M", "Woman in the Window", and "1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse". This film with the music of Kurt Weill and the way the various characters are developed in the context of the modern workplace and the struggle to find happiness and thrive in a fast-paced society makes this one of Fritz Lang's best dramas. Dan Basinger

Fritz Lang had a reputation for disliking american actors and actresses, but he made three films with Sidney; sadly, because the reviews and receipts were lacking, it was their final film together. You And Me has some spectacular shots of machinery and late 30's office work that stands up even today, with a clear message about industrialization, the "modern" work-place, and american society in general. The film also features magnificent music and song from Kurt Weill. This may not be as riveting as Fury, or as depressing as You Only Live Once, but it is indeed, a masterpiece! And George Raft is just fine, too.

This collaboration by Fritz Lang and Kurt Weill is one of the oddest films ever made. It's part gangster story, part comedy, part soap opera, part leftist propaganda...and part musical! Perhaps Weill was trying to find the cinematic equivalent of what he did in the theater with Bertolt Brecht. In any event, the experiment is a failure but a noble failure and in parts quite interesting. It's definitely worthy seeing for two montages set to rhythmic voiceover narration, for Sylvia Sidney's sympathetic performance and for the fact that you'll never see anything else quite like it.