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.

Many serious film buffs have made the comparison between this movie and Casablanca. The director and cast are almost identical. They also take issue with the nested flashbacks, claiming that it confuses the story. I disagree. Think for a moment; if Casablanca had never been made, this would certainly be a riveting movie in it's own right. It deserves to stand alone and be recognized - for the propaganda it was.

I won't go into the story itself, but I couldn't help making an observation about the cast. This is supposed to be a story about French convicts who recognize the errors of their ways and come to France's aid when she needs them most. Humphrey Bogart and George Tobias were from New York (the accents prove it), Philip Dorn from the Netherlands, Helmut Dantine from Austria, Peter Lorre from Hungary, Victor Francen from Belgium, Vladimir Sokoloff from Russia, and Claude Rains, John Loder, Sidney Greenstreet from England. Only Michelle Morgan was French and she seemed more like an afterthought.

An honorable mention for my favorite director: Michael Curtiz. Many people have called him a studio hack and criticized him for his dictatorial rather than directorial attitude toward cast and crew alike, but anybody who could construct such diverse masterpieces as "Casablanca" and "The Adventures of Robin Hood", deserves much more credit than he ever got. I urge you to review his screen credits. He was prolific and uncompromising in the quality of his work.

Wartime heroics never seemed exploited in quite so complex a fashion as "Passage to Marseille," directed by Michael Curtiz…

Bogart, a French journalist framed for murder because of his political views and sent to Devil's Island during World War II, escapes from his penal hell with four other convicts and winds up on a French freighter bound for home… Hoping to rejoin the fighting Free French resistance movement, the men, all fiercely loyal patriots, become involved in preventing a takeover of the ship by Fascist sympathizers…

This relatively simple plot line is then surrounded by a series of extraneous plots and subplots which were related in a series of single, double, and even triple flashbacks, making any semblance of coherency virtually impossible…

Bogart's characterization is equally vague and complicated as he maintained an opposing balance of virtue and vice… At one moment he is the picture of idealistic moral righteousness fighting against a callous system, and the next he debased his human nature as he brutally machine-guns some defenseless enemies… His moral platitudes do not balance his immoral behavior, making for ambiguity and confusion...

The most important saving grace of "Passage to Marseille" is the supporting cast headed by Bogart's "Casablanca" co-stars Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre, who all turned in strong character portrayals

On the horizon a canoe that's a small crew, without sustenance, they're all just about through, the Ville de Nancy brings them in, a war wages from Berlin, through several flashbacks there's a story that comes through. As it transpires that they've escaped from Devil's Island, they are keen to get to France to fight for their land, but a Vichy sympathiser, and his sycophant adviser, try to scupper this bedraggled, ragged band. It's not the greatest film with folks you may admire, Sydney has an odd accent, that's rather dire, but generally it's fine, as they sail across the brine, you can tick it off your list if you require.

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.