Review of One Way Street

James Mason has made many doctors on the screen, and they are all very thorough and interesting characters with some depth and usually some terrible problems, and this is no exception, but still this doctor is something different from the others. There is no suicidal tendencies here, no deadly jealousy and no call for some hero to engage and interfere, but rather an appointment with the inevitable. He is actually doomed from the beginning and aware of it, and he accepts the challenge and adapts himself to its consequences, while the lovely Marta Toren gilds it with her charming presence and personality, a fugitive from somewhere whom a gangster brought up (the always nasty and revolting brute Dan Duryea) for something of an ideal to himself, while she needs something better provided by James Mason.

The first scene is actually one of the most exciting in all the chonicles of the noirs, in unbearable suspension all the way up to the first inevitable car crash - there will be others. Also that first street of only one way will come back later.

There are many other gripping ingredients as well, the role of the padre, the village life, the local hoodlums and their berserk folly, the beautiful environment in contrast to the smoky and rainy gangster stinking darkness, and Frank Skinner's excellent music, perfectly suited to both the romantic situations and the pastoral idylls of Mexico.

In brief, it's a typical James Mason noir, and it could hardly be more typical. He played the same kind of character any number of times, but every time it's equally fascinating in its unfathomably attractive tragedy.