Simply A Masterpiece

hyped garbage

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Having brought Kay Francis and William Powell over from Paramount in 1932, Warner Brothers reteamed them in a romance that turned out to be as good as anything they did at their former studio.Kay Francis plays Joan, a doomed girl with an unnamed disease on her way to a sanitarium in San Francisco. Her case is fatal, it is just a matter of whether it is months or weeks or days. William Powell plays Dan, an escaped murderer who has been sentenced to hang that is recaptured in Hong Kong by a detective (Warren Hymer) who has the flattest of feet. Hymer usually played dense types, but here he has a head on his shoulders, most of the time. Dan and Joan meet in a bar in Hong Kong, and it is love at first sight.They wind up on the same boat headed back to San Francisco. Dan has convinced the cop to let him wander about the boat freely because he saved the cop from drowning, though he did so reluctantly. Joan sees Dan on the boat and decides she is going to live life to the fullest, even if it shortens her days. Ultimately, both of them wind up losing their lives for the sake of their love for the other. Dan loses a couple of opportunities to escape to help Joan, and Joan shortens her life by not staying in bed during the whole voyage and ultimately dies upon the shock of hearing about Dan's fate and seeing Dan led away in handcuffs as they dock in San Francisco.Now this might seem like a depressing movie, but Warners did lighten it up a bit by sticking in a romance between a con-woman (Aline MacMahon) posing as a Russian countess and the cop who at first sees Dan as a great prize to take back to the states, but by film's end feels very sorry for the guy to the point you can tell he wishes he could just let him go. Frank McHugh rounds things out as a pickpocket.The final scene gets me every time. Dan and Joan, through their entire 24 day voyage, have been lying to each other about their fate and vow to meet in Agua Caliente for New Year's Eve if they can't find each other before. Thus the final scene is a sad McHugh, drinking alone in Agua Caliente as New Year's partying goes on around him. There is a sound of breaking glass. There, with nobody around, are the stems of two broken glasses laying side by side - which was what Joan and Dan did with their glasses when they had their first drink together. The glasses disappear and become as invisible as the lovers, presumably reunited at last in the hereafter.If this doesn't choke you up, check to see if you have a pulse. You could be dead yourself.

A marvelous little (at a swift 67 minutes) movie about a doomed romance between two people on a voyage that may well be their last. As a pre-Code (when, among other things, criminals didn't necessarily have to be punished for their crimes) picture there's uncertainty about how things will end, as well as a scene that although not in the slightest bit racy, leaves no doubt that sexual intercourse has occurred. William Powell and Kay Francis have wonderful, starry-eyed chemistry together and it's one of those only-in-the-movies affairs that ropes you in. There's also some terrific business involving the supporting players, especially Aline MacMahon and Warren Hymer. A couple of the drunken bits with Frank McHugh are dumb, but they're the only missteps in the film, and he has some other moments that are quite funny. The camera-work is really exceptional for its time, with a number of lyrical movements and expressive shots, including one that would be echoed in Borzage's MOONRISE. I've liked Tay Garnett's noir for the most part, but this swept me off my feet. A very enjoyable, impressive and touchingly sweet film that's packed with charm.

In between his time with Paramount and MGM, William Powell did a two year stint at Warner Brothers where I don't think Jack and his brothers ever quite knew what to do with him. His films there, vary in quality, but the best of them is this doomed romance with Kay Francis, One Way Passage. The title itself tells how poignant this film will be.Powell is a fugitive who is tracked down and brought aboard ship in handcuffs by San Francisco Detective Warren Hymer. Powell escaped while being transported to San Quentin to be hung for murder. At the same time good time party girl Kay Francis is traveling home essentially to die. Unsaid at the time because the audience knew what the effects of bootleg liquor were on some people from the Roaring Twenties. Her organs are generally failing and she's coming home to die.These two people are as poignant a pair of lovers as has ever been brought to the screen. Neither knows about the other and the aura of heartbreak just permeates One Way Passage. It's a cosmic joke played on them, both finding in each other a reason to live and both knowing it can't be.Warren Hymer plays it a great deal straighter than he normally does. He's not the brightest cop in the world, but he's a far from the dim witted hooligans he usually is cast. Aline McMahon and Frank McHugh are a pair of confidence workers who both team up to help the doomed Powell and Francis. McHugh repeated his own role in the remake of One Way Passage from 1940, Till We Meet Again.The most cynical heart will melt in seeing One Way Passage.

This is a truly remarkable film. I have only ever seen it once and that was over sixteen years ago. It is not normally my kind of film but found myself watching it one wet afternoon and I can still vividly remember not only the film itself but the impact it had upon me. William Powell shows just what a good actor he is. A convicted murderer being returned to San Francisco to be hanged he meets a terminally ill woman and they fall in love. Foregoing the chance to escape Powell returns the sick Kay Francis to the ship which is taking him back to his doom. The occasional relief of the awaiting gallows underlines the sacrifice he has made. Once back on board they play out the charade that their romance can continue, each hiding from the other their own known fate yet secretly knowing their own and each others. At once almost unbearably sad yet uplifting. On reaching harbour they bid farewell and agree to meet at a night club at New Year. The dramatic impact of the ending sent me into a flood of tears. even though this contains a spoiler alert I can't bring myself to describe the ending - you simply must see it. Tragedy played with Powell's usual diffidence but here it is only superficial. Great performances all round.