One Way Street

1950

Crime / Drama / Film-Noir / Thriller

3
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 25% · 1 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 25% · 50 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.5/10 10 1078 1.1K

mexico gangster film noir

Plot summary

After stealing a gangster's money and his girlfriend, a doctor heads for a small village in Mexico to hide out.

Director

Hugo Fregonese Photo
Hugo Fregonese

Top cast

Dan Duryea Photo
Dan Duryea as John Wheeler
Kenneth Tobey Photo
Kenneth Tobey as Cop at Second Accident
James Mason Photo
James Mason as Dr. Frank Matson
Märta Torén Photo
Märta Torén as Laura Thorsen
720p.BluRay 1080p.BluRay
723.76 MB
1280*934
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 18 min
Seeds ...
1.31 GB
1480*1080
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
1 hr 18 min
Seeds 6

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by bmacv 7 / 10

Great beginning, pretty good ending. Too bad about the middle

One Way Street opens beautifully. Sirens shriek through the Los Angeles nightscape while, from the window of an apartment building, an elegant woman (Marta Toren) smokes as she watches them disappear. She reports her observations to Dan Duryea, who has just masterminded a big heist. One of his lieutenants (William Conrad), however, has taken a bullet, which gang-sawbones James Mason is summoned to extract. He does so, meanwhile launching a ploy by which he departs not only with all the loot but with Toren – Duryea's moll. Although fate almost deflects their escape, they finally cross the border to Mexico.And here the movie settles in for a long siesta. Mason and Toren find themselves in a primitive village where Mason's medical skills are pressed into service (he cures a horse but can't save a little girl). There's plenty of warmed-over wisdom issuing from an itinerant priest (Basil Ruysdael) and plenty of danger from bandidos who keep cropping up, swigging mezcal while wiping their lips with the backs of their hands and eying Toren up, down and sideways. Despite these distractions, she seems to like it there and wants to stay, but Mason wants to press on to Mexico City (and their divergent goals and low-key temperaments serve to keep the romance distinctly cool). This snooze is interrupted a couple of times by cuts back to Los Angeles, where Duryea and Conrad are bent on recouping the money – and on revenge. But only when Mason returns to have a face-to-face reckoning with Duryea does the movie spring back to life. And in a rhyme of its earlier, unexpected intervention, fate proves that it always has the last word.One Way Street was the first feature in English by the Argentinian-born director Hugo Fregonese, who stayed in Hollywood long enough to churn out a few westerns and genre-pictures (Man In The Attic, one of the many versions of The Lodger was his work). From the bookends that open and close One Way Street, he had a feel for the look and pace of film noir, but the thick volume of Mexican folklore they surround turns out to be a not very film-worthy property.
Reviewed by bkoganbing 7 / 10

A defrocked doctor

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.
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