Passage to Marseille (1944)

Pretty Good

Perfect cast and a good story

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

George Tobias has no scenes with Michele Morgan in this Casablanca reunion entry. For some reason I have never seen it but I was in Paris when Michele Morgan who WAS truly angelic died at the age of 96 a few days ago as I write; I was buying dvds, primarily French but a soupcon of Hollywood, as I often do at this time of year and on my return I chose to watch this one first as a tribute to a beautiful and very fine actress. Alas, she is given little to do and it is easy if not facile to see her as the token 'foreign' leading lady, the Ingrid Bergman part if you will in this never-going-to-work repeat of director Michael Curtiz, top-billed Bogie, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and uncle Tom Cobleigh and all. The flashback-within-flashback gimmick is probably where The Locket got its ideas from and though it's serviceable at best it was especially poignant to watch Michele Morgan in her prime teamed with the one American actor who most resembles Jean Gabin, arguably her best co-star.

"Passage to Marseille" is a Warner Brothers film starring the usual Warner Brothers stellar cast: Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, and Claude Rains, and also featuring Michele Morgan, George Tobias, Helmut Dantine, Philip Dorn, and John Loder. Though no one seems to like the comparison with "Casablanca," it does seem to be trying to cash in on that film's huge success when one considers the cast and Bogie's conflicted character. But "Passage to Marseille" is a good film on its own, despite the obvious comparisons.The story is told in flashback, and also in a flashback within a flashback. The film begins in a secret base in France that's disguised as a farm, and one of the characters asks Captain Freycinet (Rains) about a pilot (Bogart). Turns out that Bogart, Lorre, Tobias, Dantine, and several other men are Devil's Island escapees who were picked up by a ship, Ville de Nancy, which is on its way to Marseille. The sympathetic captain hears their individual stories. All want to fight for France.Matrac (Bogart) was a journalist opposed to the Munich Pact, and the newspaper he worked for was leveled to the ground. The focus is mainly on his character; he has left a wife (Michele Morgan) and a little boy he's never seen.Some very exciting scenes in this entertaining and often poignant film, sturdily directed by Michael Curtiz, with excellent performances. Definitely worth seeing, even if it's not the best of the WW II genre.

After an astounding success of "Casablanca" in 1942, Hollywood (thing didn't change a bit)wants to squeeze more money out of that French resistance business. And here comes "Passage to Marseille". As it almost always happens in these situations the magic is completely gone. Most of the actors are rehired in similar roles (and they are all to one great, old pros), the plot has certain flair, but movie just doesn't have any fizz. Mr. Bogart's New York accent is a joke, Mr.Greenstreet pulls all the old, tired tricks from his sleeve, and the rest of the cast is just doing the job. This movie is a charming little piece of propaganda and it belongs to dusty shelves of some old film museum.

An above average, if inexpensive, Warner Brothers war-time movie about the Free French in England. Five French convicts manage to escape from Devil's Island with the help of Grandpere, a patriotic ex-convict who has managed to save enough money to buy the escapees a canoe. He makes them promise that when they escape they will fight the Germans who have occupied France. All but Bogart take the oath.What a bunch of Frenchmen they are too. Grandpere is a Russian. The rest of the group include a New York Episcopalian, one Slovakian Jew, one Jew from New York, a Dutchman, and an Austrian anti-Nazi. That's Warners for you. As long as they had an accent they could be anything. George Tobias does decently by his French accent. Bogart isn't required to try.It's a decent movie -- full of propaganda of course, but well acted and thoroughly dramatic, written by Nordoff and Hall ("Mutiny on the Bounty") and directed by craftsman Michael Curtiz. The picture is deadly serious. When a German aircraft attacks the freighter the convicts are on, Bogart not only helps shoot it down but then machine guns the helpless German crew as they climb onto the wings of the wrecked plane. It's a brutal scene today, and probably was at the time.The structure is a little complicated. There is a flashback within a flashback, for instance. (I think one of the narrators is named Marlow. Is this an echo of Conrad?) But we never get lost. There is an action scene near the beginning, in which Free French flying fortresses bomb occupied France and fight off German planes, but most of the film is taken up with the journey made by the convicts from Cayenne to the French airfield in the English countryside.The film is studio bound and the maritime scenes are tank bound, but art direction is up to Warners' standards and sometimes looks better than the real thing. Makeup did a fine job too.A bitter and efficient movie. Worth catching.