Passage to Marseille ***½ (1944, Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Michèle Morgan, Helmut Dantine) – Classic Movie Review 3880

Director Michael Curtiz’s propaganda-driven 1944 wartime thriller provides a slightly bumpy passage despite the first-class passengers, including the welcome reunion of five of the stars of Casablanca (1942) – Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Helmut Dantine, as well as its director. Victor Francen, Philip Dorn and George Tobias are also featured. It is one of Bogart’s least-known an least-regarded movies.

Bogart stars as French newspaper publisher Jean Matrac who is framed for murder to silence him, convicted and sent to jail, but escapes from Devil’s Island with four others and joins a ship bound for Marseilles. Greenstreet plays fascist sympathiser Major Duval who tries to seize the ship for Vichy since France has surrendered. Matrac helps the Free French.

As French bomber crews prepare an air raid from a base in England, Captain Freycinet (Rains) tells a journalist the story in flashback of the French pilots stationed there. The second flashback is at the prison colony at Cayenne in French Guiana and the third flashback shows Matrac being framed.

The complex flashback within a flashback within a flashback structure in Casey Robinson and Jack C Moffitt’s screenplay follows the narrative structure of the novel but on screen they are troublesome and alienating. Understandably, it is one of the few films to use this multi-flashback structure. Then again, at times, even director Curtiz can’t always whip up a huge surge of interest in the story.

However, there is a decent set-up, plausible situations, interesting characters and some excellent action, though. Also, the Devil’s Island scenes work well, James Wong Howe’s black and white cinematography and Max Steiner’s score are superb, and that fine clutch of players give the kind of effortlessly magnetic performances that makes it still indispensable viewing.

It is based on the novel Sans Patrie (Men Without Country) by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, authors of Mutiny on the Bounty.

Of the cast, only Michèle Morgan is actually French, born on 9 February 1920 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, France. One of the greats of French cinema, a great beauty, and French national treasure, Michèle Morgan (real name Simone Renée Roussel) died on 20 December 2016, aged 96.

Also in the cast are John Loder, Eduardo Ciannelli, Konstantin Shayne, Monte Blue, Corinna Mura, Vladimir Sokoloff, Charles La Torre, Hans Conried, Mark Stevens, Louis Mercier, Billy Roy, Donald Stuart, Walter Brown, Carmen Beretta, Diane DuBois, Jean del Val, Alex Papanao, Peter Miles, Raymond St Albin, Peter Camlin, Anatole Frikin, Frank Puglia, Harry Cording, Adrienne D’Ambricourt and Fred Essler.

A scene that showed Bogart’s character machine gunning German pilots was censored in the foreign version.

Shooting took place at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden in Arcadia, California, with additional location shooting in Victorville, California.

A subdued Bogart was troubled by marital difficulties and a lack of commitment to the project due to a conflict with studio boss Jack Warner over another film called Conflict (1945).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3880
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