Best movie ever!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Producer/director: FRITZ LANG. Screenplay: Virginia Van Upp, from a story by Norman Krasna. Photographer: Charles Lang, Jr. Art directors: Hans Dreier, Ernest Fegté. Set decorator: A. E. Freudeman. Music: Kurt Weill, Boris Morros. Songs, "The Right Guy for Me" by Kurt Weill and Sam Coslow; "You and Me" by Ralph Freed and Frederick Hollander. Film editor: Paul Weatherwax. Music director: Boris Morros.Copyright 10 June 1938 by Paramount Pictures, Inc. New York opening at the Paramount: 1 June 1938. U.S. release: 3 June 1938. Australian release: 20 August 1938. Sydney opening at the Prince Edward (as the top half of a double bill with Dr Rhythm): 20 August 1938 (ran 2 weeks). 10 reels. 8,425 feet. 93 minutes. (7/10 DVD, non-commercial outlets).SYNOPSIS: Mr. Morris owns a large department store and makes it a policy to hire ex-convicts. In a weak moment, one of them (Joe Dennis) decides to rob the place and organizes the others to help. COMMENT: A very curious film noir indeed. Lang saw it as a comedy, but that's certainly not the view the studio took — and advertised. Under Lang's typically forceful direction, some of the performances are too powerfully intense for comedy. In fact, they're almost too much for drama.The other striking feature of the movie is Kurt Weill's operatic score.Really, I would describe "You and Me" as just an ordinary women's weepie melodrama, were it not for the powerful acting, the atmospheric score, and the superbly noirish photography by Charles Lang, Jr.

If you've ever studied film history, you probably know that 1940s Hollywood Noir was influenced by the influx of German directors who immigrated to the US as the Nazis rose to power. These directors brought some stylistic aspects of Wiemar cinema to post-war Noir. What's less well know is that in the 1930s and war years, before the stylistic and political chill of the red scare, already on the rise in the late '40s, the German directors, such as Fritz Lang, were using their Brechtian style- openly political and meta-textual- in much more brazen and less-watered down ways than they were in the post-war Noir years. (Lang would later direct "Hangmen Also Die"- one of the few Hollywood scripts Brecht ever wrote.) "You and Me" is a largely forgotten example of the films of this era. The film is fascinating and entertaining, although perhaps too idiosyncratic to be called "good." For its first two thirds its a genuinely touching and psychologically acute love story between two ex-cons struggling to get by. It would constitute a solid, conventional drama if it were not fragmented by nightmarish musical numbers lecturing the audience that, for instance, its a bad idea to try to break out of prison on your own. Most bizarrely, the last third changes tone completely and becomes a bona-fide screwball comedy revolving around a chalk board lesson mathematically demonstrating why crime, literally, doesn't pay. Although Brecht's influence is felt in almost every scene the politics of the film are in no way radical- as some Hollywood films of the era were in underlining ways. This piece, rather, is merely cynical about American capitalism, without actually questioning it.

"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