You Only Live Once

You Only Live Once follows Eddie Taylor, an ex-convict who has been sentenced three times for serious crimes. After his release from prison, he tries to settle down with Joan Graham, his girlfriend and later his wife, but steady work and decent housing prove almost impossible to find. When a hat bearing his initials is found at the scene of a bank robbery in which guards were killed, the police charge him with a murder he did not commit. Rather than face execution, he breaks out of prison. The escape turns him into an actual killer, and he and Joan, with their baby, take flight toward the Canadian border.

Fritz Lang directed the film, the ninth of the twenty-four features he made in chronological order. It came after Fury in 1936 and before The Return of Frank James in 1940. The screenplay is by Gene Towne and C. Graham Baker, and the cast includes Sylvia Sidney as Joan, Henry Fonda as Eddie, Barton MacLane, Jean Dixon, William Gargan and Jerome Cowan, among sixty-seven credited performers. Walter Wanger Productions made the picture for United Artists, and it runs eighty-six minutes.

Critical response was strong: a critics' rating of 9 out of 10 from eleven reviews. Audiences were more reserved, with 7.2 out of 10 on IMDb from around 8,300 votes and 7.1 out of 10 on TMDB from roughly 196 votes. The difference suggests critics held the film in higher regard than general viewers did.