Passage to Marseille

It must be a problem for first-time viewers to watch this flashback within a flashback within a flashback film. There is also the urge to compare this with "Casablanca". It cannot hold a candle to that masterpiece. On its own, it has some good qualities. The production is first-rate. The cast do excellent work considering the limits of the cliche-ridden script. The Devil's Island sequence is particularly well executed. So we have a film that may disappoint considering the talent but is hard to dismiss.

Passage to Marseille (1944)

*** (out of 4)

Big-budget Warner war film about a group of Devil's Island escapees who join up with the French to battle Germans. I had held off on watching this film for many years expecting your typical WWII drama but that's certainly not what I got as the movie is quite different from other movies and in the end it comes off quite fresh and original. The movie is pretty much told via one flashback after another as we jump around in the story but this never get confusing as the screenplay perfectly builds off everything that happened earlier in the movie. We have Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre playing two of the escaped convicts and getting to know their backstory just added to everything that would follow when it came time to escape and then when it came time to fight. The film has an all-star cast that not only has Bogart and Lorre but we also get Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, George Tobias, Philip Dorn, Michele Morgan, John Loder and several other familiar character actors from the studio. The performances by the entire cast are very good but the film clearly belongs to Bogart who once again proves he was one of the all-time great tough guys. Only Bogart could pull off a role like this because he makes you understand why he hates his country yet, at the same time, you can tell that deep down he's going to have courage and be ready to fight when that time comes. Towards the end of the film when everyone is on a boat, which is about to be taken over by the Germans, a great battle follows and this entire sequence contains one great action piece after another and in the middle of it all is Bogart and you believe everything he does. The rest of the cast are all good and add a lot of entertainment to the film as one would expect from such veterans. Curtiz once again shows why he's one of the most underrated director's in the history of this era as he not only handles the action sequences but he also does a marvelous job with the quieter moments and he's perfectly capable of letting the drama build up over time. Many people have called this CASABLANCA-light as this film has pretty much all of the same talent behind it but it's really unfair to compare the two films as they are quite different on all levels. This film here certainly isn't a masterpiece but this is still a very solid action film that deserves a better reputation than it has.

I think this film gets a bad rap as most people see it as a Casablanca wanna-be based on the fact that the same players appear in both (even the singer Corinne Mura shows up here although she was uncredited in Casablanca). Granted, this is a propaganda film but so were hundreds of others made at this time. France gets particular attention as the sole cause of the Munich sell-out and Marshall Petain, old and misguided, gets all the blame......this is not exactly how it was but we have to remember that Vichy was collaborating with the Nazis. (Remember how Claude Rains threw away the bottle of Vichy water in Casablanca?) So we have to view this film in the context of the times.

Bogey plays his character just like Bogey.....no attempt at a French accent which probably would have been disastrous anyway and the cast is a melting pot of nationalities. But how can you go wrong with Bogey, Greenstreet, Rains and Lorre? They could make an educational film about the building and maintenance of an internal combustion engine interesting!

The flashbacks are not hard to follow, and although a rather awkward story telling method in this particular film, don't really take that much away from the screenplay.

Bogey's actions surrounding the survivors of the downed German plane were a bit surprising but hey, it was war. The entire fight on the ship against the Germans was the best part of the film.

Michele Morgan had absolutely nothing to do in this film which is too bad as she was a wonderful actress with a haunting beauty but this is basically a man's movie.

All in all, this isn't a bad film but it has suffered because of its comparison to Casablanca. Be warned that it is pure propaganda but I found it enjoyable and a window on a different time.

Pretty cool WWII story, told mostly through flashbacks, about French convicts led by Humphrey Bogart who escape from Devil's Island to go help their country fight the Nazis. The men are picked up by a freighter bound for home and must deal with slimy Sydney Greenstreet, who isn't particularly opposed to the idea of a Nazi-occupied France.

Reunites Casablanca costars Bogart, Rains, Lorre, and Greenstreet with director Michael Curtiz. In many ways, this could be seen as a possible sequel to Casablanca, though certainly not in that film's league. I could see where you could rework the story to be about Rick, Ilsa, and Louis' post-Casablanca story. Cute use of models in early scene where the war correspondent arrives to speak with Claude Rains. This movie is slammed a lot for its use of the flashback-within-a-flashback-within-a-flashback technique. Normally I'm not a fan of that myself but here I didn't think it was confusing like critics claim. The ending is kind of depressing but realistic. War is hell, after all.

It looks like a sure-fire winner on paper, but nothing about Passage to Marseille really clicks. Bogie's Devil's Island escapee never feels like a fully-rounded character, and Greenstreet, Lorre and Rains - Bogart's fellow stars from the same studio's Casablanca - are wasted in largely inconsequential roles. Another negative: the clumsy flashback structure plays havoc with the pacing of the story. Still watchable, but a definite misfire.