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.
Review of You and Me
