JohnHowardReid 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.

dbdumonteil "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.

bkoganbing You And Me is an interesting experiment which falls way short in execution, but still is an interesting view.The closest American film I could compare it to is Al Jolson's Hallelujah I'm a Bum which utilized that same sing/talk rhythmic technique in many spots. Rodgers&Hart's efforts were not as butchered as Kurt Weill's were, my guess is that Paramount got cold feet and tried to salvage the film as they saw it by making it more of a typical gangster yarn.The story involves Harry Carey who as part of his payback to society hires freshly paroled convicts in his department store. The presumption is that he does screen them for employment. George Raft is one of those ex-convicts hired there and he meets and falls for Sylvia Sidney. She knows about him, but he doesn't know she is also on parole. Other prison pals working for Carey are, George E. Stone, Warren Hymer, Jack Pennick, Robert Cummings and Roscoe Karns.One very unregenerated crook, Barton MacLane, tries to get the whole crew of them to help knock over the store. What happens is the rest of the plot of the film.Perhaps You and Me might have been better done elsewhere. I'm thinking of Warner Brothers who specialized in these working class stories. Barton MacLane, George E. Stone, and Warren Hymer certainly all were part of Warner's gangster stable and George Raft moved to Warner Brothers himself a year after You and Me came out. Paramount just didn't go in for stories like these and the results show.Highlight of the film is Sylvia Sidney giving a lecture in economics about how crime doesn't pay. For heist guys like these when you deduct the expenses of a job, it really doesn't pay. Only the folks at the top really make out.By the way you might call what Kurt Weill tried to do musically and Fritz Lang brought to the screen as one long rap music video. You and Me may have been way too soon ahead of its time.Still it's probably worth a look if for no other reason than to see a joint collaborative effort of two expatriates from the Nazi regime, Kurt Weill and Fritz Lang.

PaulineDorchester As a fan of both Sylvia Sidney and Kurt Weill, I have wanted to see this film ever since I read Leonard Maltin's description of it. It is apparently not available for home viewing, so Heaven bless the Brooklyn Academy of Music, which screened 'You and Me' a couple of weeks ago as part of its Kurt Weill centennial celebration (which continues as I write this).According to an edition of Stagebill that was made available to audiences at the screening, Weill composed 23 music cues for 'You and Me,' but the Paramount brass did not care for his work and used only nine of them. (This was typical of Weill's experience in Hollywood.) That's a genuine tragedy, and there's no question that it does diminish the film. 'You and Me' still rates a 10 in my book, however, for the outstanding performances from the entire cast and its anti-naturalistic approach to gritty, "realist" subject matter.The line between anti-naturalism and implausibility is a fine one, and the film crosses that line during its last 15 minutes or so. Still, I wonder if audiences in 1938 didn't understand that ending as a joke. They may have been more sophisticated than we are today.In any case, if you get a chance to see this film, grab it.