One Way Passage

Two passengers meet on an ocean liner. Dan Hardesty is a condemned murderer being taken back to America by a policeman. Joan Ames is in the last stage of a fatal illness. Each hides it from the other, and across the voyage they fall in love without saying any of it. Tay Garnett directs. William Powell plays Dan, Kay Francis plays Joan. It runs sixty nine minutes, and the brevity is a choice. Nothing is explained. You know within the first half hour why each of them is silent, and every scene after that carries the weight of knowing. The most remembered detail is a habit: every time they drink they break the glasses and leave the stems on the edge of the bar. At the end that gesture makes a whole sentence on its own. It won the Oscar for original story in 1933, from Robert Lord's story. It was made before the Production Code began to be enforced in earnest. Death, execution and a relationship outside marriage are handled with no moral correction attached; a few years later that would not have been possible. Who it is for: viewers who like pre Code Hollywood and short, tightly built melodrama. Who it is not for: for anyone used to modern pacing the shipboard scenes and the supporting characters are very old fashioned.