Fritz Lang helmed You and Me, his third American feature, a noirish melodrama, written by Norman Krasna and Virginia Van Upp.
Grade: C+ (** out of *****)
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Sylvia Sidney, in her third consecutive film for Lang, and George Raft play a couple of criminals on parole, working in a department store populated with similar employees.
Narrative Premise:
The owner of a large department store, Jerome Morris (played by Harry Carey) likes to hire offenders released on parole as a chance to rehabilitate, but he doesn’t the other staff to know.
Among them is Joe Dennis (Raft), who is resigning and leaving for California in order to end his growing friendship with fellow-employee Helen Roberts (Sydney), as he feels unworthy of her; he does not feel he could marry such a sweet innocent girl.
They spend a last evening together and, as he boards the Greyhound bus, she says that if he asked to marry her, she would consent.
After rushing to an instant marriage bureau, they go back to her room. Helen says they must keep the wedding secret, because Mr. Morris does not approve of employees marrying each other. In fact, he does not mind, but Helen is not allowed to marry while on parole.
William Le Baron of Paramount asked Norman Krasna to write a vehicle for George Raft, and Krasna agreed on the condition that he would also direct.
But Raft and Paramount did not want Krasna to helm. Later on, B.P. Schulberg, a producer at Paramount, decided to re-activate the project, and replaced Carol Lombard with Sylvia Sidney. Eventually Raft, who had appeared with Sidney in The Pick Up (1933), rejoined the project.
Then, by May 1937, Schulberg was no longer producer, and the directing was assigned to Fritz Lang, who had cast Sidney in his first two Hollywood movies, Fury and You Only Live Once, both superior to this one.
In his previous expressionist work, Lang had used musical score from Kurt Weill. However, influenced by Bertolt Brecht’s Lehrstucke, a theatre that teaches, this time around, Lang wanted to make a didactic picture teaching the audience that crime doesn’t pay, which was a lie, “because crime pays very well.”
That message was spelled out at the end of the tale by Sidney’s Helen on a blackboard to a classroom of crooks.
Weill composed music for certain scenes, including the tunes “Song of the Cash Register,” “Knocking Song, “The Right Guy for Me,” “Romance of a Lifetime,” “The Song of the Lie,” “We’re the Kind of People Who Sing Lullabies.”
Lang himself didn’t like the movie, which turned out to be a box office flop, though it would not damage his prospective career in Hollywood.
He himself later said that the scene where prisoners were nostalgic for prison was “stupid.”
Placed in perspective, You and Me is one of Lang’s weaker movies, showing neither particularly string affinity with the material, nor ability to elevate it with his distinctive visual style.
Robert Cummings, who would become a major player (he would play the romantic lead in Hitchcock’s Dial M. for Murder), has a small role in the film.
Cast
Sylvia Sidney as Helen Dennis
George Raft as Joe Dennis
Barton MacLane as Mickey Bain
Harry Carey as Jerome Morris
Roscoe Karns as Cuffy
George E. Stone as Patsy
Warren Hymer as Gil Carter aka Gimpy
Robert Cummings as Jim
Adrian Morris as Knucks
Roger Gray as Bath House
Cecil Cunningham as Mrs. Morris
Vera Gordon as Mrs. Levins
Egon Brecher as Mr. Levins
Willard Robertson as Dayton
Guinn Williams as Text
Bernadene Hayes as Nellie
Joyce Compton as Curly Blonde
Credits:
Produced and directed by Fritz Lang
presented by Adolph Zukor
Written by Virginia Van Upp, based on a story by Norman Krasna
Music by Kurt Weill
Cinematography: Charles Lang
Edited by Paul Weatherwax
Production: Fritz Lang Productions
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Release date: June 3, 1938
Running time: 94 minutes
