You and Me

Fritz Lang was brought in late to this project after it had languished for a few years for a few reasons, invited to the project by his female star of his last couple of movies, Sylvia Sidney. I wonder if he had had more time with the material beforehand he could have ironed out some of the disconnect between different sections of the film. Knowing his work, he probably would have pushed it further into a straight drama instead of the combination drama/comedy that is the end result. That's not supposed to be a big hit against the movie, though. The discordant nature of the storytelling is actually a source of fun with the comedy keeping things light without quite losing the commitment to the actual emotional throughline that runs through the film. It's just kind of odd when the light comedy/drama film ends with, essentially, a slapstick routine.

Mr. Morris (Harry Carey) runs a department store where he offers job opportunities to ex-convicts to help them get their lives back on track. He tries to keep their employment and past as much a secret as possible, not even revealing their past incarcerations to any of the other employees, and it's working out for him. There's been no backsliding so far, and they're doing good jobs. One such employee is Joe (George Raft), a former member of the mob who has developed a nice little relationship with Helen (Sidney), another employee of the department store. He's dedicated to moving across the country to California since his parole is over, though, and on his last night in town, the two go dancing. She realizes the depth of her feelings for him and, as the bus is pulling away, she proclaims it and says that she'll marry him if he wants. He immediately jumps out, and they get married that night.

The problem is that Helen has a secret. She's also an ex-con (for a crime that never gets explained), and she's still on parole that includes the rule that she cannot marry. She keeps this a secret from Joe. This seems thin, but there is an established reason for it. Joe talks about wanting his girl pure in the context of having never loved another man. Going to jail is impure, so she hides it from him. He ends up reacting badly to the later reveal, but it still feels thin. I think it would have worked in a more purely comedic context (like in a Leo McCarey movie, for instance), but the dramatic tone of the material isn't really matched by the actual weight of it.

Still, they have to put up a fiction that they are not married. She gives the excuse that Mr. Morris doesn't want his employees marrying each other, a lie that Joe eventually uncovers and helps seed his nascent distrust of her. At the same time, the old mob, led by his fellow Morris employee Cuffy (Roscoe Karns), is trying to get Joe to join them on a big job to rip off the Morris Department Store, and after the reveal of Helen's past, Joe is finally ready to give in.

Now, the introduction of the gang happens at about the halfway point, and it's something of a showstopper. The introduction is necessary dramatically and structurally to happen at some point (though a more polished script would have had it after about fifteen minutes instead of forty-five), but that's not the showstopper part of it. The sequence is an outright German Expressionistic and Soviet-style edited marvel as the group of men gather around a table and reminisce about their time in the clink. It becomes rhythmic auditorily and visually as they chant their story back and forth. It's really something else and doesn't fit in the movie stylistically at all. I'm glad it's there, though. It's good.

The plan goes through but gets stopped in what is the oddest way possible. Helen presents to the gang how little money they'll make from the robbery, proving with math that crime doesn't pay. It's so ridiculous that it has to be intentionally funny (it might not be), but I was giggling through the whole thing nonetheless. And then there's a slapstick bit where the guys all work together to ensure that Joe and Helen get back together.

Yeah, it's a hodgepodge of a film, but I actually quite enjoyed it. It feels like Lang taking lighter material and pushing it his own, more serious-minded, direction while the charm of Sidney and Raft create the balance between the lighter and darker parts of the story. It's funnier more than moving, making me feel like it would have been better as an outright screwball comedy rather than being somewhere in between.

Sylvia Sidney and George Raft star in "You and Me," a 1938 film.

The owner of a large department store believes in second chances, so some of his staff are ex-cons, Joe Dennis (Raft) being one. His parole is almost over, and he's determined to keep his nose clean, despite former gang members trying to get him back in with them.

Joe has a friendly relationship with a woman who works at the store, Helen Roberts (Sidney). When he's about to leave town to get away from bad influences, he realizes he loves Helen, gets off the bus, and the two marry and move into Helen's apartment house.

Helen tells Joe that the boss at their store does not want his employees married to one another, so they have to keep quiet about it. The truth is that Helen is an ex-con as well, on parole, and forbidden to marry, although she does not admit this to Joe and continues to hide it.

When Joe learns she has been lying to him, he leaves her and returns to his old friends, who want to rob the store.

Interesting movie, due to a "cell block tango" that the criminals do - where they speak in unison, in hushed voices, using a sing/talk rhythmic technique, by Kurt Weill.

Sidney and Raft are terrific, and you are really pulling for them. The denoument is wonderful and the ending is sweet.

What a fascinating little film, on a variety of levels. There is an expressionism that would have made Elmer Rice proud as well as a distinctly European approach. It feels as if it could be either a German product or from much earlier in the '30s when Hollywood was still in an experimental phase of self-discovery. There is nothing quite like it out there.

This is pure Fritz Lang, coupled perfectly with Charles Lang Jr.'s photography, with Kurt Weill's music jumping in abruptly to make you catch your breath. The blend of comedy and drama is smooth.

The plot line is familiar to this cast. A businessman makes a point of hiring parolees at his department store, where some are clearly having trouble adjusting. Joe has abided by the strict demands of his parole and his time is at last up, freeing him to marry Helen. But she has never told him that she too is an ex-con and still has several months of parole to serve. She has to tell lie upon lie to cover up the secret. Meanwhile, his old gang is nipping at him to join up again in another heist scheme.

Not for the last time, the film exposes the difficulties of staying straight, difficulties arising both from the system itself as well as peer pressure.

Some plot points are similar to Pick-up, a George Raft-Sylvia Sidney film of a few years earlier, but this story is much stronger. At this time Raft was in the middle of a five-year era when he was at his best - relaxed and in character, willingly joining in the sometimes unusual proceedings. Sidney is beautifully sympathetic as a criminal, always hoping two wrongs will make a right. What a one-of-a-kind screen presence she was. Her work with Raft always seems like two pals getting together again. That makes the wedding night sequence and the around-the-world honeymoon all the more entertaining.

The rest of the cast, from wonderful Harry Carey to cynical Roscoe Karns, turns in strong, imaginative performances. As odd as some moments might be, everyone is clearly "in on" Lang's vision.

There is a great scene of the gang reminiscing about their prison days that displays that vision full force. This is what the film is all about.

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.

That doesn't fit with what most people think about Fritz Lang. He's generally a tragedian at this point in his career. You and Me is very similar in subject to his previous film, You Only Live Once, about an ex-con who can't get a break. Here, George Raft plays an ex-con working at a department store. Sylvia Sidney is his girlfriend. She also works at the store, and she has a secret: she's an ex-con, too. Raft has a bitter double standard and despises female ex-cons, so Sidney can't tell him the truth.

Near the beginning, the film seems a bit clunky. The opening is kind of goofy, and, it being a Lang film, you might be confused about how you should take it. His other films aren't completely without comedy. Few films refuse to give us at least a couple of laughs along the way, perhaps close to the beginning. But You and Me just keeps getting sillier.

I was finally won over by an extraordinarily stylistic sequence where a mob of criminals recall their days in jail with a musical number. After that enormously entertaining sequence had come and gone, I knew that anything could go. In fact, anything can go and does. The film ends up being one of the most original films ever made. No comedy is like this. You know, I don't want to swear to this, but You and Me is perhaps my favorite Fritz Lang film. I actually haven't seen any masterpiece (i.e., 10/10s) from him, including Metropolis and M. You and Me, like M and Fury, my other two favorites, gets a 9/10.