One Way Passage (1932)

As Good As It Gets

Absolutely Brilliant!

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

. . . and others that you'd just as soon forget. When you start out NOW, VOYAGER, you do not want to wind up as TOPPER. This is why ONE WAY PASSAGE may not be everyone's cup of Koolaid. (It's bad enough to spend an hour with a DEAD MAN WALKING, but it adds in salt to injury if the nun's also on her last legs!) However, such griping from casual viewers does not detract from Warner Bros. true topical intent with ONE WAY PASSAGE. The affair here between "Don" and "Joan" is alcohol-fueled from start to finish, right through to their graves and beyond. In Real Life, America was "Dry" under Prohibition when ONE WAY PASSAGE was filmed, and drunken driving deaths were at an all-time low. IF the USA goes through with a Repeal and becomes awash with booze once again, Warner Bros. courageously warns here, it will mean a ONE WAY PASSAGE for literally MILLIONS of citizens into Eternity. Since half of those slaughtered on the highways are Innocent Tea-Totallers--including thousands of babies and children under age 12--each and every viewer must look into their hearts, Warner exhorts, and ask "Do we REALLY want to support such a ONE WAY PASSAGE?"

OK, I was cruising along with this cast of characters nicely and figured, oh well we all gotta go sometime, no biggie. Then, the last scene really hit me hard. I was so surprised, given that not much else happens unexpectedly and was even rather annoyed they made such a mess with those glasses.Great credit is due to that pickpocket's laugh, thee best on celluloid to date and even better than that "Simpson's" Nelson punk. It did not annoy and found his antics most humorous, for that era quite an accomplishment.I never got the Kay Francis craze, her girlfriends were much prettier but guess she is an acquired taste. She did look her best in the flowing white/light gowns and several angles enhanced her countenance.Always interesting to see stock footage from the long gone era of Hong Kong, Queen Mary (?), San Quentin, etc. even though the frame inserts were cumbersome cuts. I would have liked to see more from a history POV.High recommend for those pre-code romances (I think I saw a black garter on the dance floor!!), how to make a Paradise Martini (delish) and the advantages of having underworld pals.

Kay Francis and William Powell made several films together, first at Paramount, then later at Warner Brothers in the 1930s. This is one of their best collaborations, at Warners. To say the stars enjoy a smooth and easy rapport in this picture is an understatement.Also helping the flow of this pictures is some great fluid camera work. Notice the part where the filmmakers zoom in on Miss Francis who is standing on the upper deck when the ship is docked. Though what I liked most about the story is that we don't exactly see what happened to the characters at the very end. We know they are both doomed, and cannot escape a tragic fate, but instead, we're left with this fleeting romance that took place during the span of a month and the lasting memory of it. It's a bittersweet, beautiful film.

This delicate shipboard romance was a popular favorite in its time and it's not hard to see why. Robert Lord grabbed a well-earned Oscar for his original story, a fanciful but ingenious doomed lovers yarn that must have offered solace to Depression-era audiences whose miseries could only pale next to those of hard-luck leads William Powell and Kay Francis.The elegant pair fall in love on a Frisco-bound ocean liner, each harboring a terrible secret that curtails their future happiness -- he's a convicted murderer returning to the gallows, she has a heart ailment and is living on borrowed time. Never mind why a dying woman is aboard a cruise ship instead of being ensconced in a terminal ward. Or why the authorities would send thick-witted Warren Hymer of all cops to bring in Powell.This is irresistible hoke, and the director Tay Garnet invests it with wonderfully eccentric touches (like the burly lesbian among the trio of portly harmonizers in a Hong Kong bar) and innovative dream-like imagery (i.e., the startling camera zoom when Powell spots Francis at the ship's railing). He also manages the near-impossible feat of keeping Francis, the lisping clotheshorse, to a minimum of cloying eye-rolls, with no small help from Powell's wry and charmingly self-effacing performance.The heavy sentiment is deftly balanced by the sparkling deadpan humor of Aline MacMahon as the Russian Countess Barrelhaus (in actuality the Brooklyn con-artist, Barrel House Betty), who conspires with perpetual drunk Frank McHugh (his grating presence is the film's sole detriment) to assist the lovers.The coda, set in a Mexican bar on New Year's Eve, is unforgettable.