![]() ![]() The fact that the young boys idolize Chuck’s all-action lifestyle and dream of emulating him adds further irony and depth to the script the only way they can emulate him, of course, is by first going through the ritual of settlement. But, finding himself suddenly having to take care of four boys after a friend dies in a tragic accident, Chuck necessarily has to domesticate himself and becomes the opposite of the wandering gunslinger the genial family man who co-operates with the local community. As One Way Street plays with the central building blocks of the noir, so Saddle Tramp does with the Western, interrogating that contradictory myth at the heart of the genre and its American mythos: McCrea’s protagonist is, to begin with, a wandering gunslinger roaming the Wild West and picking up work wherever it can be found - he’s the archetypal hero of the genre. Again, the basic structure is there of a wanderer finding a romanticized idyll that requires domestication, this time filtered through the prism of a comedy Western. As attempts to domesticate Mason in his beachside idyll fail, One Way Street returns to one of those central thematic concerns of noir - that fate comes for us all - and the great actor’s sonorous, agitated voice and furrowed brow go a long way to creating this multi-faceted, poetically tragic character.Ī counterpart to One Way Street can be found in Hugo Fregonese’s immediate follow-up, Saddle Tramp (also 1950), starring Joel McCrea as Chuck Conner. But as a doctor in a rural community, Mason becomes an indispensable force for good to the locals (who are, admittedly, also seen in rather simplistic, dualistic terms).īut within that black-and-white moral vision, Hugo Fregonese finds greyness and murkiness. There’s a simple duality to the character - his association with organized crime (and references to losing his medical license) puts him clearly on the wrong side of the law. But the impulse to return, or perhaps the inability to believe that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, tears away at him, like a moth to a flame. ![]() Hugo Fregonese situates Mason in this beachside paradise with the love of his life as the two integrate themselves into a new community. Yet, in classic noir style, a perpetual guilt tugs at Mason in One Way Street. ![]() Read More at VV - Il Cinema Ritrovato: ‘Tony Arzenta’ and Recanonizing Italian Genre Cinema Flush with cash, and with not a single mobster any the wiser as to their location, lifelong freedom is within the protagonists’ grasp. Escaping by plane to Mexico City, John and Laura make an emergency landing on a beautiful seaside Mexican village. But One Way Street entirely changes tack midway into a swooning romantic idyll. Starring James Mason as a mob doctor, Frank Matson, who steals the money of John Wheeler (Dan Duryea) and his girl, Laura Thorsen (portrayed by Märta Torén, a young Swedish actress who tragically died at the age of just 30), the film sets itself up as a man-on-the-run noir, with the leads sticking it out against a vengeful villain. That fatalism is a key recurrent theme in Hugo Fregonese’s first Hollywood film in 1950, One Way Street. Fregonese’s protagonists are often men on the run, constantly looking over their shoulder, but also fools who don’t realize when they’ve struck gold the sort of men convinced they ought to look a gift horse in the mouth. What emerges is a director drawn to stories of nostalgia, of roaming, of drift and of an inability to find a place to call one’s own. The Il Cinema Ritrovato strand - evocatively titled “The Drifter’s Escape” and co-curated by Dave Kehr and festival director Ehsan Khoshbakht - surveys a number of Hugo Fregonese’s Hollywood films and others from that run. This year, the title of the great rediscovered auteur goes to Hugo Fregonese, an Argentina-born director who only made films in Hollywood for a few years amidst a 30-year career. Blunt and direct as the tactic may be - bound to raise even Andrew Sarris’ eyebrows when it comes to framing films exclusively through auteurism - there’s no denying that it’s been successful in the past. Hollywood’s studio era remains a continual goldmine for film historians and cinephiles looking for hidden gems, and Il Cinema Ritrovato has made a habit of yearly rediscoveries of long-forgotten directors whose turn it is be elevated to auteur status. ![]()
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