ONE WAY PASSAGE: Blu-ray (Warner Bros., 1932) Warner Archive

Robert Lord won an Oscar for Best Original Story for director, Tay Garnett’s One Way Passage (1932) a deceptively adult and ethereal melodrama in which some sublimely played satire never gets in the way of a painful and lovely, ill-fated affair du coeur. The picture stars the marvelous William Powell and no-nonsense, Kay Francis in their sixth and final screen teaming. With its emphasis on the breezier love affair, this melodrama involving a murderer’s last chance at finding shipboard romance with a terminally ill socialite, sparkles like vintage champagne and, despite its seemingly contrived premise, manages to remain an indelibly truthful and appealing classic. Today, Kay Francis is a largely forgotten figure of the cinema firmament – a tragedy, the actress would likely have approved as, in her emeritus years she shunned the spotlight, preferring to live obscurely and alone. Mercifully, this had not always been the case.

Born, Katharine Edwina Gibbs (she took her grandmother’s maiden name ‘Francis’ to fit on the marquee), Francis was imbued with a certain impatience to get her life started. At age 17, she wed for the first time (there would be three such ill-fated marriages in her life) and made her Broadway debut in 1925, at barely the age of 20, by her own confession, “lying a lot, to the right people”. Less than 5 years after that, she marked her movie debut. Very nice work if you can get it! She costarred with William Powell first in 1930’s Street of Chance, and then, in rapid succession, appeared in 21 more movies in just 3 years! By 1932, Francis had shrewdly made the move from her alma mater – Paramount, to Warner Bros. to become the highest paid actress on their backlot by 1935, her yearly $115,000 salary eclipsing the $18,000 of then rising star, Bette Davis.

Ironically, Davis would eventually outclass and out-gross Francis, moving into her plush dressing room on the backlot. The fall, for Francis came not from without but within, as she began to feud with her superiors over the parts she was getting. While this strong-arm tactic would benefit other stars in a few short years – notably Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland – in Francis’ case, it eventually led to the premature termination of her contract, and her branding as ‘box office poison’. With the outset of WWII, Francis invested herself in volunteer work to occupy her time, then, at war’s end, signed with Monogram Pictures, making several indistinguishable programmers beneath her one-time stature as a great star. Bad decisions and declining health hastened her retirement. Eulogizing her life and career in a well-kept diary, Kay Francis died in 1968 of an aggressive cancer. She was only 63. At her request, she was cremated, her ashes disposed of as ‘the undertaker sees fit’. 

As for co-star, William Powell, he outlasted Francis’ by a very wide mile and would remain somewhat hermetically sealed in the minds of movie goers as an elegant, charming, A-class bon vivant – thanks, largely to his frequent on-screen teaming with Myrna Loy in MGM’s highly popular franchise, The Thin Man (1932-44). Like Francis, Powell embarked upon his career in the mid-1920’s. Unlike Francis, he knew instinctively how to handle success and fame. A veteran of the Vaudeville and Broadway stage before coming to Hollywood, Powell’s earliest film appearances at Paramount oft cast him as the villain. Powell and Francis both left Paramount for Warner Bros. within a year’s time to appear in One Way Passage. Unlike Francis, Powell was beloved by virtually all who knew him, best remembered for his self-effacing thoughtfulness, congenial sense of humor and his ability not to take life too seriously. This latter quality would be tested twice – first, with the loss of screen siren, Jean Harlow in 1937 to whom Powell was engaged, and one year later, with his own diagnosis of rectal cancer for which Powell underwent ‘then’ experimental radium treatment that took him off the screen for nearly 2 years, but mercifully put his disease into full remission.  A gentleman to the end, Powell would retire from the movies in 1955, but live until 1984, dying of pneumonia - age, 91.

Powell and Francis are in rare form in One Way Passage. He plays Dan Hardesty, an escaped murderer, sentenced to hang. In a Hong Kong bar, Dan literally bumps into Joan Ames (Francis), a terminally-ill socialite, as her friends are bidding her bon voyage. Passion ignites and the couple shares a cocktail, after which they break the bowls of their glasses, leaving the stems crossed on the bar. It ought to be smooth sailing, except San Francisco Police Sergeant Steve Burke (Warren Hymer) captures Dan at gunpoint as he exits the bar. Unbeknownst to Joan, Burke escorts Dan onto the same luxury liner bound for Frisco. A struggle ensues. Dan manages to throw Burke overboard. Handcuffed to Burke, Dan has no choice but to save his life. However, once aboard, Dan convinces Burke to free him of these restraints. After all, there is nowhere left to run. As it will take a month for the liner to dock at port, Dan romantically pursues Joan, neither aware the other is as cursed by the specter of death.

By happy coincidence, Dan is reunited with two friends: the pickpocket, Skippy (Frank McHugh) and con artist, Barrel House Betty (Aline MacMahon), masquerading as a countess. At Dan’s behest, Bette keeps Burke occupied. Thus, when the ship briefly docks in Honolulu, Dan manages to escape the brig and arrange for passage on a steamer bound for parts unknown. Too bad, love intervenes yet again. It is Joan who now bumps into Dan while in port. Her rapidly advancing illness causes her to faint. An empathetic Dan forfeits his opportunity to run away, carrying her back aboard. The ship’s doctor (Frederick Burton) confides in Dan about Joan’s fatal condition and Dan confesses his plight to the doctor in kind. In the meantime, Burke and the ‘countess’ get very chummy. He knows her truth identity, but keeps it to himself. As love takes hold, Burke offers Betty the chance to retire with him to a little farm in the country – a dream she always aspired to, but never thought she could attain.

When Burke gets a telegram from headquarters, instructing him to bring Betty in, he instead decides to throw his career away and give Betty her dream. There is, after all, enough of it for two to share…just not enough to go around for Dan and Joan. Learning the truth about her lover, Joan frantically searches the decks for Dan. Finding him with Burke, the handcuffs concealed by an overcoat draped over his wrist, Joan bids Dan goodbye for the last time, agreeing to meet on New Year’s Eve in Agua Caliente, Mexico, while knowing it can never be. At the appointed time and place we find a solemn Skippy and hear the sounds of breaking glasses. A pair of bartenders are bewildered to discover crossed stems and the shattered remains of two cocktail glasses lying on the bar, as if to have been toasted by invisible hands, glistening for a brief moment before vanishing into thin air.

One Way Passage is a magnificent romantic fantasy, anchored to reality by the underpinnings of its bittersweet tragedy. Its finale, which had the potential to unravel into camp or cheap corn, instead is subtly revealed as one of the most heartrending and bittersweet testaments to lost love ever conceived for the screen. Today, director, Tay Garnett is an all but forgotten figure in Hollywood’s lore, his irrefutable masterpiece, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1944). One Way Passage, however, should be considered his other great achievement, because its sentiment goes well beyond the precepts of then highly popularized ‘woman’s pictures’. Not much has been written of Garnett’s application of zooms, dolly and tracking shots, achieved herein with effortless precision just two short years after the movies learned to talk. Garnett carries it off with such breathtakingly ‘off the cuff’ technical finesse, easily to leave the rest of Hollywood’s relatively static picture-making in the dust. Like all great art, One Way Passage offers the viewer various points on which to affix their admiration, from its dramatic sophistication and Robert Kurrle’s gorgeous cinematography, to its wit-laden screenplay by Wilson Mizner and Joseph Jackson.

It is one of Hollywood’s ironies, Mizner and Jackson were whittled out of the Oscar race, the statuette exclusively afforded Robert Lord on whose story their formidable magic is based. But Garnett’s direction here is worthy of high marks for its al dente storytelling. At barely 68-mins. there is only enough time to tell the tale without lingering on its sentiment. Curiously, this elevates sentiment itself to a whole new level of appreciation, intermittently augmented with just the right amounts of droll comedy and frothy misfortune on which directors like Douglas Sirk would later establish their own cottage industry. What could have so easily devolved into farcical melodrama, here rises like cream to a heightened level of art imitating life in the very best way all truly great movies should, though only a handful actually do. If One Way Passage has a flaw, it is that there’s just not enough of it to sustain some of the broader passages involving the supporting cast, the worst of the lot, Frank McHugh, whose over-the-top performance is pretty tough to take – even, in increments. Mercifully, Garnett concentrates far more on Powell and Francis, each appearing so believably natural in their desperate longing to be together, our hearts collectively break for this romance gone, that was so divine.

One Way Passage is, at long last, given its due on home video. This little seen, but fondly remembered classic emerges from his overdue hiatus, looking decades’ younger than its 91 years. The Warner Archive has honored one of its best with a classy looking 1080p Blu-ray, surely never to disappoint. It is getting redundant with WAC releases to sing their praises. But herein, we again are given an exemplar in video mastering with excellent tonality in the gray scale and exceptional overall image clarity. Owing to film stocks of the day, and Robert Kurrle’s slightly diffused cinematography, the image is softly focused as it should be. This is a gorgeous looking image with virtually no hint of age-related artifacts. The DTS 2.0 mono sounds solid. Again, owing to early – primitive - recording, dialogue is not entirely crisp. However, it sounds truthful to its vintage, minus the usual hiss and pop – digitally removed for our listening enjoyment. Bottom line: One Way Passage is a picture that, with each passing year grows more heartfelt. The stars are in top form. The same can be said of WAC’s video mastering effort. Very highly recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

4

VIDEO/AUDIO

4.5

EXTRAS

0