One Way Street

....which ruined the ending of this movie.

"One Way Street" from 1950 stars James Mason, Marta Toren, Dan Duryea, and William Conrad. Mason plays Dr. Frank Matson, a mobster, John Wheeler's (Duryea) doctor. It isn't clear why the doctor isn't in practice; one assumes he botched an operation or something.

Matson steals $200,000 from Wheeler by telling him he has just given him poison, and that he'll call in one hour with the antidote. He then leaves with the money and Wheeler's girlfriend Laura (Toren). They wind up in a small village in Mexico where the two become fixtures - Matson provides medical care for the people and animals, and Laura says it's the only place she has ever felt safe.

However, Wheeler is looking for them, so Matson makes a tough decision.

Well the code wrecked the end of this film. I was very disappointed.

Someone commented that Mason was miscast - he certainly has a lot of class and expertise for a mob doctor, who are usually drunks whose hands shake. Marta Toren was so beautiful, but she died at the age of 31. Tragic. Dan Duryea is his usual mean self, and William Conrad is on hand as a fellow thug.

Good movie except for...the end.

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.

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.

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.

James Mason, Marta Toren, Dan Duryea, and William Conrad all do a wonderful job in this first-rate production of a doctor's misadventures after associating with the wrong kind of people. A few bad decisions is all it takes; that and the Production Code, which single-handedly ruined the end of this film. A doctor hatches a clever plan to rob thieves of their heist money, and takes the moll of gangster Duryea as well. As the two flee to Mexico, there is a turn of events and the good character of the doctor begins to emerge. I will not reveal the miserable ending to this potentially wonderful film, but suffice it to say that those who decided on this ending were merely cowards, and had not a trace of real humanity within them.