Having brought Kay Francis and William Powell over from Paramount in 1932, Warner Brothers reteamed them in a romance that turned out to be as good as anything they did at their former studio.
Kay Francis plays Joan, a doomed girl with an unnamed disease on her way to a sanitarium in San Francisco. Her case is fatal, it is just a matter of whether it is months or weeks or days. William Powell plays Dan, an escaped murderer who has been sentenced to hang that is recaptured in Hong Kong by a detective (Warren Hymer) who has the flattest of feet. Hymer usually played dense types, but here he has a head on his shoulders, most of the time. Dan and Joan meet in a bar in Hong Kong, and it is love at first sight.
They wind up on the same boat headed back to San Francisco. Dan has convinced the cop to let him wander about the boat freely because he saved the cop from drowning, though he did so reluctantly. Joan sees Dan on the boat and decides she is going to live life to the fullest, even if it shortens her days. Ultimately, both of them wind up losing their lives for the sake of their love for the other. Dan loses a couple of opportunities to escape to help Joan, and Joan shortens her life by not staying in bed during the whole voyage and ultimately dies upon the shock of hearing about Dan's fate and seeing Dan led away in handcuffs as they dock in San Francisco.
Now this might seem like a depressing movie, but Warners did lighten it up a bit by sticking in a romance between a con-woman (Aline MacMahon) posing as a Russian countess and the cop who at first sees Dan as a great prize to take back to the states, but by film's end feels very sorry for the guy to the point you can tell he wishes he could just let him go. Frank McHugh rounds things out as a pickpocket.
The final scene gets me every time. Dan and Joan, through their entire 24 day voyage, have been lying to each other about their fate and vow to meet in Agua Caliente for New Year's Eve if they can't find each other before. Thus the final scene is a sad McHugh, drinking alone in Agua Caliente as New Year's partying goes on around him. There is a sound of breaking glass. There, with nobody around, are the stems of two broken glasses laying side by side - which was what Joan and Dan did with their glasses when they had their first drink together. The glasses disappear and become as invisible as the lovers, presumably reunited at last in the hereafter.
If this doesn't choke you up, check to see if you have a pulse. You could be dead yourself.
Kay Francis plays Joan, a doomed girl with an unnamed disease on her way to a sanitarium in San Francisco. Her case is fatal, it is just a matter of whether it is months or weeks or days. William Powell plays Dan, an escaped murderer who has been sentenced to hang that is recaptured in Hong Kong by a detective (Warren Hymer) who has the flattest of feet. Hymer usually played dense types, but here he has a head on his shoulders, most of the time. Dan and Joan meet in a bar in Hong Kong, and it is love at first sight.
They wind up on the same boat headed back to San Francisco. Dan has convinced the cop to let him wander about the boat freely because he saved the cop from drowning, though he did so reluctantly. Joan sees Dan on the boat and decides she is going to live life to the fullest, even if it shortens her days. Ultimately, both of them wind up losing their lives for the sake of their love for the other. Dan loses a couple of opportunities to escape to help Joan, and Joan shortens her life by not staying in bed during the whole voyage and ultimately dies upon the shock of hearing about Dan's fate and seeing Dan led away in handcuffs as they dock in San Francisco.
Now this might seem like a depressing movie, but Warners did lighten it up a bit by sticking in a romance between a con-woman (Aline MacMahon) posing as a Russian countess and the cop who at first sees Dan as a great prize to take back to the states, but by film's end feels very sorry for the guy to the point you can tell he wishes he could just let him go. Frank McHugh rounds things out as a pickpocket.
The final scene gets me every time. Dan and Joan, through their entire 24 day voyage, have been lying to each other about their fate and vow to meet in Agua Caliente for New Year's Eve if they can't find each other before. Thus the final scene is a sad McHugh, drinking alone in Agua Caliente as New Year's partying goes on around him. There is a sound of breaking glass. There, with nobody around, are the stems of two broken glasses laying side by side - which was what Joan and Dan did with their glasses when they had their first drink together. The glasses disappear and become as invisible as the lovers, presumably reunited at last in the hereafter.
If this doesn't choke you up, check to see if you have a pulse. You could be dead yourself.