One Way Street

When the film begins, a bitter doctor (James Mason) is helping out an injured man who is the member of a mob gang. He isn't doing this out of any sense of duty...he wants money and the mob has plenty after pulling off their latest caper. However, in a surprise twist, the Doc steals their $200,000...as well as the gangster boss' girlfriend! The pair run south to Mexico...and you know the crazed boss (Dan Duryea) will eventually come running after them.

In the meantime, the couple get stranded in the middle of no where in a small town after their airplane develops engine trouble. After a while, the pair grow to like the place and the bitter doctor eventually finds he's a beloved and important part of the the community. They also begin to care for each other. But, as I already mentioned, the gang boss isn't about to let the pair have a happy ending if he can help it! And the Doc considers returning the money with the hope that the evil boss will just let them go.

With gang members like Duryea, William Conrad and Jack Elam, the casting director did a nice job in picking up some nasty and menacing folks to play the baddies. The script and acting are also quite nice. What I also appreciated was that the film was tough and when the two characters became nicer...they still had a hard edge and weren't over-idealistically good. Entertaining from start to finish and well worth seeing if you love film noir.

In the Citadel Film series book on The Films Of James Mason, Mason himself said that he was never told by viewers that they saw this film or was ever questioned about it. I guess that One Way Street might be overlooked in the big budget films that would shortly follow in his career. That's a pity because this one is a good, but fatalistic noir film, something along the lines of Odd Man Out.

In One Way Street Mason is a doctor whose practice is on the wrong side of the law, patching up criminals and not reporting about it. We're never told brought him to this because no one starts this way in the field of medicine.

While on a house call to Dan Duryea's mob after they've pulled a heist, Duryea rides Mason once too often and through a rather ingenious bluff he winds up stealing the loot from a robbery the gang just pulled off. Not only that, he winds up stealing Marta Toren away from Duryea so Dan has two reasons for going after him.

Mason and Toren have to land in a remote village in Mexico when the plane they've chartered develops engine trouble. Even a defrocked doctor is welcome among these people where Mason and Toren settle and start to enjoy life a little, but life and the past do catch up.

Duryea's henchmen include William Conrad, King Donovan, and Jack Elam who are as scurvy a lot as you'll find. Basil Ruysdael who is always an authority figure of some kind is fine as the local priest at the village where Mason and Toren are staying. Look fast or you'll miss Rock Hudson in a bit role as a truckdriver with one line in the film.

Marta Toren who hoped to succeed both Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman as a cinema sensation from Sweden died tragically young. She never broke into A pictures in America, but she was for me one of the most beautiful women the big screen ever saw.

If your genre is noir you cannot go wrong with One Way Street.

This movie was a joy to watch and James Mason really shines in his role as well as Dan Duryea, and William Conrad. I loved every minute until the very end which to me was so senseless. I won't give it away but this film would have been a ten out of ten had it not been for this mistake. It is still a very entertaining film.

I quite enjoyed James Mason's performance here as the calculating "Dr. Matson". He is frequently summoned to treat the hoodlums of gangster "Wheeler" (Dan Duryea) and during one such visit espies a bag, similar to his own, that contains $200,000 in stolen loot. After a bit of macho banter with his patient, he picks up the bag and makes for the door. He has given the boss some pills and any interference will prevent him from getting the antidote! This is the moment that moll "Laura" (Märta Torén) has been waiting for and she decides to abscond with the doctor. Their escape plan doesn't quite go to plan, though - a car and a plane accident - before they find themselves in a small town where his skills and their burgeoning love start to make them wonder if their master plan is still the best one. Meantime, though very much on the back burner, the mobsters are determined to avenge themselves on both of them. It does rather run out of steam with half an hour to go, and though the ending is actually quite fitting it was all just a little bit rushed and, I felt, frustrating! Still, there's some chemistry between the two and Basil Ruysdael's priest, a sick horse and some really lightweight banditos all play to the story quite well too. You'll probably not recall it afterwards, but it's a bit different.

I tend to mostly avoid James Mason films in a British setting as he frequently evokes the staid, bloodless, leather driving glove school of acting of England in the 1950s.

Here, however, as a fish out of water character in this U. S / Mexican saga he is rather good. The accompanying cast of Marta Toren, William Conrad and the always excellent Dan Duryea are hard to resist. The final act contrasts of a baked Mexican pueblo back to a rain sodden nocturnal American city are extremely evocative. Ditching the Noir urban for a village, and redemption in the bucolic charms of country life is a novel take for a film of this genre.

Here's the kicker - very hard to find a 35mm converted version of this film, instead it is the horror of Blu ray / HD manipulations which are in ready supply, a technology which completely destroys old movies. The displaced filmic world, the wealth and grain of celluloid is replaced by shiny, immediate, clear cut images, completely erasing depth of field and the necessary suspension of disbelief - instead, constantly jolting the viewer out of absorption and into an over awareness of sets, props and the artifice of production.