Frame grab from Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger, 1958). See Christian Keathley's article on découpage in this film here

• The Fritz Lang Dossier, Part 2
  

• Rush to Judgement: Imperfect Justice in Fury (1936)
  Stella Bruzzi
• You Only Live Once (1937)
  V. F. Perkins
• Going Straight: The Past and the Future in The Return of Frank James (1940)
  Edward Gallafent
• The Woman in the Window (1944)
  Mark Rappaport
• Guess-Work: Scarlet Street (1945)
  Adrian Martin
• The Big Heat: Acts of Violence (1953)
  Peter William Evans
• Human Desire (1954)
  Deborah Thomas
• Lang With Lacan: The Power of the Gaze in Moonfleet (1955)
  Peter Benson

• Bonjour Tristesse and the Expressive Potential of Découpage
  Christian Keathley
• The Texture of Performance in Psycho and its Remake
  Alex Clayton
• The Cry of the Owl: Investigating Decision-Making in a Contemporary Feature Film
  John Gibbs

Image from The Testament of Dr Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1933). Read Michael Walker's article on this film here.

A great way to start the week, Film Studies For Free thinks. The second issue of the new Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism has just been posted online, with a wonderful looking Lang dossier, a fine tribute to the late Robin Wood, which takes the form of seven of his rarest pieces from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. And there's more besides on Susan Hayward and Vincente Minnelli. Direct links to all items are given below.

Now, to read it!

Issue 2

• Fritz Lang Dossier, Part 1
  

• Notes on Metropolis Michael Walker
• M: Leading the Blind Douglas Pye & Iris Luppa
• Das Testament des Dr Mabuse Michael Walker

• Susan Hayward in the 50s Edward Gallafent

• Madame Bovary, C’est Moi – Signed, Vincente Minnelli Mark Rappaport

• Robin Wood: A Tribute
  

• Psychoanalyse de Psycho / Psychoanalysis of Psycho Robin Wood

• Attitudes in Advise and Consent Robin Wood

• In Memoriam Michael Reeves Robin Wood

• Sense of Dislocation Robin Wood

• Signs and Motifs Robin Wood

• Moments of Release Robin Wood

• Call Me Ishmael Robin Wood

Image from Rancho Notorious (Fritz Lang, 1952). Read Hilaria Loyo's Star and National Myths in Cold War Allegories: Marlene Dietrich’s Star Persona and the Western in Fritz Lang’s Rancho Notorious (1952)

• Melvyn Stokes and Dominique Sipière
  Out of Many, One: European film-makers construct the United States 
  
  
• David Roche
  (De)constructing “America”: the Case of Emir Kusturica’s Arizona Dream (1993) 
  
  
• Frank Mehring
  From Independence Day to Land of Plenty: Screening American Patriotism from German Émigré Perspectives before and after 9/11 
  
  
• Hilaria Loyo
  Star and National Myths in Cold War Allegories: Marlene Dietrich’s Star Persona and the Western in Fritz Lang’s Rancho Notorious (1952) 
  
  
• Ian Scott
  “Don’t Be Frightened Dear … This Is Hollywood”: British Filmmakers in Early American Cinema 
  
  
• Yves Carlet
  Frank Capra and Elia Kazan, American outsiders 
  
  
• Vicente J. Benet
  Eldorado Revisited: Spanish Film-makers in Reagan’s America 
  
  
• Jeffrey L. Meikle
  Transatlantic Refractions: Ambivalence and Cultural Hybridity in the Euro-American Road Movie 
  
  

Image from You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang, 1937)

• 'Same Tune Again! Repetition and Framing in Letter from an Unknown Woman' (originally published in CineAction! no. 52) republished online by Danish film studies journal 16:9 (September 2003) and accessible HERE.
• 'Moments of Choice' [on film directing] (originally published in The Movie, ch. 58, reprinted in Ann Lloyd (ed.), Movie Book of the Fifties, Orbis, 1982) republished online by the Australian journal Rouge (issue 9, 2006) and accessible HERE.

Anyone who wants to write usefully about You Only Live Once has to build on the work of George M Wilson. A chapter in [Narration in Light: Studies in Cinematic Point of View (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986)] makes a systematic presentation of the movie’s narrative strategies, and a detailed reading of key images. Wilson shows how Lang’s picture is designed to educate its viewers in the manipulability of the image, and to demonstrate the power of the film sequence to deceive us by obscuring key points in its story and by soliciting preferred readings that the content of the images may not in fact guarantee. The achievement that Wilson uncovers is the more remarkable in that it occurs not in an illustrated lecture but in a fiction movie, one that works to powerful effect within its genre of social protest melodrama.

Wilson’s essay opened my eyes to You Only Live Once, a movie that I had previously found opaque because, apart from its evident social project, I had not seen a purpose in its meticulous design beyond that of giving power and plausibility to a noticeably contrived tale. In what follows I take for granted the main lines of Wilson’s argument in order to develop some remarks on Lang’s mise-en-scène in two representative sequences.