You and I (1938, Fritz Lang)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | You and me |
| Original title | You and Me |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1938 |
| length | 90 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Fritz Lang |
| script |
Norman Krasna Virginia Van Upp Jack Moffitt |
| production | Fritz Lang |
| music |
Kurt Weill Boris Morros |
| camera | Charles Lang |
| cut | Paul Weatherwax |
| occupation | |
| |
You and Me (Original Title: You and Me ) is an American film by Fritz Lang from 1938 . The film combines elements of the gangster film and the music film with a romantic comedy .
action
Jerome Morris, owner of a large store, situated on probation a freed offenders to a chance for them rehabilitation has to offer. Among the 2500 employees in his department store there are fifty ex-prisoners, most of whom do not know each other. One of them is Joe Dennis. Joe wants to quit his job at the department store and move to California so that he no longer has to be around his colleague Helen Roberts. He has fallen in love with her but doesn't dare to hold her hand as he has confided his past to her. His probation requirements, which included not being allowed to marry, have now expired. After a happy evening in the dance hall, Helen convinces Joe to marry them that same night in an office for "quick marriages". She does not tell him that she too is coming out of prison and is still on probation - she is not allowed to marry. When the newlyweds return to Helen's apartment, the landlord couple suddenly stands in the door and wants to throw them out, furious. As soon as Helen has informed them about their marriage, the landlords are transformed and - also in the further course of the film - they are delighted by the young couple.
Wanting to avoid her probation violation being exposed, Helen urges Joe not to tell anyone in the store about her marriage. Joe is amazed, but lets himself be appeased by Helen, who says it is a rule of Mr. Morris that his employees should not marry one another. Over time, however, Joe becomes suspicious: by chance he becomes aware of another married couple among the employees who are not hiding their marriage, and when he brings Helen her bathrobe, a wad of papers falls out of the drawer that she does not want him to look at - this because it contains her probation document. Joe thinks of love letters and walks out into the rain, confused, because for the first time he has the feeling that Helen is not being honest with him.
Joe is persuaded to meet by a former prison mate. Several employees of the department store are planning a raid on it. When Joe doesn't want to know anything about it at first, they tell him about Helen's past. Severely disappointed and angry at Helen, he joins the gang . Their leader hires a lawyer as a precaution in the event that something goes wrong - but he immediately informs Mr. Morris of the planned department store robbery. Another gang member, Gimpy, is friends with Joe and sees with displeasure how he is drawn into the matter. He calls Helen and tells her to keep Joe busy on the night of the planned crime so that he cannot go out. He doesn't really want to reveal what it's about, but he's so clumsy that Helen quickly finds out. She cannot comply with Gimpy's request because Joe no longer speaks to her. Helen also goes to Morris to warn him.
When the gang penetrates into the department store, they find themselves surrounded, taken by surprise and disarmed by Morris' gunmen. Morris gives them a sermon - but doesn't want to send them back to prison. Helen had persuaded him not to have her arrested and that he would rather let her continue to work for him rather than pay for her imprisonment as a taxpayer. Then Helen counts the perplexed criminals on a blackboard that “crime doesn't pay” - in dollars and cents. She shows them that, after deducting all expenses for the individual gangster, only a modest amount would have remained of the expected loot, for which the risk would not have been worth it. The gangsters are convinced and are enthusiastic about Helen's cleverness. Joe, however, is still mad at her: “I wasn't great either, but I told you. I didn't lie or cheat. ”Helen storms out of the department store; After the rest of the gang has also left, Joe remains alone in the department store, which has been abandoned at night.
The film closes with a happy ending : Joe thinks differently, takes a perfume for Helen in the department store - not without properly booking the purchase amount and issuing a receipt - and can finally embrace her after a few more confusions in the hospital, where she has since given birth to his baby. Her understanding probation officer let her probation violation go through; however, they must remarry because their original marriage was invalid. The whole ex-criminal gang surrounds them congratulating them.
music
The score is by Kurt Weill and includes the songs Song of the Cash Register , Knocking Song , The Right Guy for Me , Romance of a Lifetime and We're the Kind of People Who Sing Lullabies . The Song of the Lie or Song of Lies was omitted in the final cut of the film. The lyrics are from Sam Coslow and Johnny Burke . Since Kurt Weill left film production early, the soundtrack by Boris Morros was completed.
The first song, the Song of the Cash Register , opens the film with an invisible singer who, in a quick sequence of images that illustrate ideas and terms, expresses with the refrain "You can't buy something for nothing", that nothing is to be had for free. An ever faster list of all the things to buy takes on a manic-absurd character: “Cheese and roses, snowshoes and statues, perfumes and pistols! Flutes and dynamos, trash cans, fans, lollipops and bricks! ”Kurt Weill himself liked this song best, although he believed it would be deleted -“ of course none of them understand it (except Lang) ”.
production
Fritz Lang's contract with Paramount allowed him to produce his own film, with great artistic freedom. The leading actress Sylvia Sidney , who had already starred twice as a leading actress in Lang films, had suggested him as a director because she did not agree with the intended director Richard Wallace . Wallace, for his part, was to direct the film in place of Norman Krasna , the author of the original treatment .
reception
The film was a commercial failure and received poor contemporary reviews. Graham Greene commented negatively on the script; the experiments with verse and chanting are nothing but the "desperate twists and turns " of a director who is caught in the " Laocoon convolutions of an impossible script". Pem (Paul Marcus) wrote a positive contemporary review , who rated you and me as a “foray into a whole new area of film”. Pem emphasizes the beginning of the film with the Song of the Cash Register : "All the beauties and necessities of life flash up in the picture and the voice of the invisible speaker says simple morals." Lang also steers “a large number of wonderful types tightly and confidently” in the film, which is part of his “self-evident”.
Fritz Lang himself thought you and I had failed. According to Lang, he was a bit of Bertolt Brecht was influenced when he made the film so that it in the sense of Brechtian apprenticeship piece was to create an educational film which gives the viewer "that crime does not pay - All which is a lie, Because crime pays very well ". Following the commercial failure of You and I , Lang was never able to work with comparable freedoms in Hollywood.
The lexicon of international film describes the film as a bitter-sweet didactic piece, "which tells not quite stringently, but precisely because of this, appealingly about the inherent laws of the world of goods and the deceptive pursuit of security". There is also a recent positive review in Chicago Reader , which you and I regard as one of the most experimental films made in Hollywood in the 1930s, and ascribe an “unmistakably skeptical view of capitalist culture as a whole”.
Web links
- You and I in theInternet Movie Database(English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c You and Me (1938) ( English ) The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music. Archived from the original on June 22, 2015. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved June 22, 2015.
- ↑ a b Thomas Willmann in: Booklet for DVD You and I , p. 8. Koch Media 2010 (Film Noir Collection; 6).
- ↑ a b Barry Keith Grant (Ed.): Fritz Lang Interviews . University Press of Mississippi, Jackson 2003, ISBN 1-57806-576-3 , pp. 105 .
- ↑ Thomas Willmann in: Booklet for the DVD You and I , p. 3. Koch Media 2010 (Film Noir Collection; 6).
- ↑ Zeughauskino . German Historical Museum. Retrieved June 22, 2015.
- ↑ Thomas Willmann in: Booklet for DVD You and I , p. 4. Koch Media 2010 (Film Noir Collection; 6).
- ↑ a b Ben Sachs: Fritz Lang's only romantic comedy still displays his skepticism ( English ) In: Chicago Reader . June 12, 2012. Retrieved June 22, 2015.
- ^ "The desperate contortions of a director caught in the Laocoon coils of an impossible script"; Graham Greene in The Spectator , quoted from: William Ahearn: You and Me . 2013. Accessed June 22, 2015.
- ↑ a b c Pem / Paul Marcus, Paris daily newspaper of June 30, 1938, quoted from: Zeughauskino . German Historical Museum. Retrieved June 22, 2015.
- ↑ Thomas Willmann in: Booklet for DVD You and Me , p. 10. Koch Media 2010 (Film Noir Collection; 6).
- ↑ You and me. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed June 22, 2015 .
