Memorable, crazy movie

Excellent but underrated film

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Overly schmaltzy, but works, just.A ship bound to San Francisco from Hong Kong has some interesting passengers. One of them is a convicted criminal, being escorted back to California by a policeman. Another is a sickly heiress. The criminal and the heiress meet and fall in love. Cue romance, and a tough choice...It's the intrigue that makes this story watchable. The romance is of your usual conventional soppy variety, so really nothing to write about there, except that it does influence the criminal's actions (adversely, I might add). Decent performances by William Powell and Kay Francis in the lead roles. The policeman, played by Warren Hymer, is quite one- dimensional, however. Even worse is Frank McHugh as the drunk: very hammy and irritating. He does provide the best scene of the movie, however. The mirror scene was Chaplinesque in its hilarity.

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.

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.

"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.