Purely Joyful Movie!

brilliant actors, brilliant editing

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

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.

"One Way Passage" is an old-fashioned love story of the kind they don't make anymore. Too sentimental, too much human feeling for today's cold, unfeeling world. People don't connect the way that William Powell and Kay Francis do here in 2011, and I'm willing to bet what passes for love nowadays is not nearly as romantic, for lack of a better word.Two doomed people meet in a crowded bar in Hong Kong, and in a good opening scene. A trio is singing, "If I Had My Way", and our two principals are at the American section of the bar. Neither is aware of the fate of the other but their fortunes immediately take a turn for the worse, culminating in the sad, lovely ending of the picture.Kay Francis is as feminine as ever, Powell never more debonair. They are supported by Aline McMahon and Frank McHugh and the film that unfolds is by turns humorous and heartbreaking. McHugh supplies the humor but his portrayal of a drunken conman is one-note and almost grating. Aline McMahon never gives a bad performance and does not disappoint here.This is a nice old movie that, as mentioned, would not be received well if made today. Too much substance and not enough form.

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.

A shipboard tale of doomed lovers, ONE WAY PASSAGE manages to be interesting despite the shaky premise that lovers can meet, fall in love instantly and all the while harboring deep secrets that neither one is willing to reveal. It makes for great cinema if done properly and this version of the weepy tale almost succeeds.The biggest drawback is the need to have comedy relief in the form of FRANK McHUGH, who overplays his role as a drunken thief in cohorts with a confidence woman, ALINE MacMAHON. While MacMahone manages to make her fake Countess a believable enough character, McHugh overplays his sing-song laugh and drunken bits of humor so outrageously that the story falls apart whenever he gets extensive footage.If the tale had been confined to Miss Francis and Powell, director Tay Garnett would have gotten better results. He manages the direction very well, especially for that neat little ending which gives the story the sort of lift you'd never expect.Kay Francis is assured and lovely as the doomed woman enroute to a sanitarium and William Powell is debonair as the man who takes one glance at her and falls deeply in love, but is on his way to San Quentin on a murder charge. WARREN HYMER, as a dumb cop, is another example of the film's penchant for weak comedy relief.All it lacks is a heavy use of violins on the soundtrack to glorify the romance--but it manages to be "an affair to remember," 1930s style, despite some weaknesses.