Passage to Marseille (1944) – full review!
Passage to Marseille (1944) – full review!
Directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca (1942)) reuniting several from that film with a screenplay by Casey Robinson (Captain Blood (1935)) and Jack Moffitt that was based on a novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall this somewhat confusing war drama adventure recognizes the contributions of the Free French in Europe during World War II. Per an armistice signed with Germany France and its people were divided – the Vichy were friendly with Adolph Hitler and the German Nazi party. This film tells a fictional story of five prisoners in France’s Devil’s Island who escape to fight for their country’s freedom by joining a Free French bomber force whose base of operations was in England. Humphrey Bogart as Jean Matrac leads Renault (Philip Dorn) Marius (Peter Lorre) Petit (George Tobias) and Garou (Helmut Dantine); all are initially assisted by a former Devil’s Island prisoner now resident butterfly collector with money named Grandpere (Vladimir Sokoloff).
The escapees make their way down a river and into the ocean where after more than 20 days at sea they are picked up by the freighter Ville de Nancy which is on its way to Marseille with a cargo of nickel carbonate. The ship which had been at sea during the political events which led to the armistice (preceded by the ‘unthinkable’ collapse of the Maginot Line) had a diverse set of Frenchman on-board including some which were for a free France most notably its captain Patain Malo (Victor Francen) and passenger French military Captain Freycinet (Claude Rains) and others which were sympathetic to the Vichy like Major Duval (Sydney Greenstreet) his ass-kissing yes-man Lieutenant Lenoir (Charles La Torre uncredited) the ship’s chief engineer (Edward Ciannelli) and radioman Jourdain (Hans Conried). A microcosm of the conflict in Europe plays out aboard the Ville de Nancy including an attack by a German bomber that leads to Matrac’s controversial killing of some (so called) ‘innocent’ plane crash survivors.
The movie actually opens with a nondescript bombing run over the Rhineland during which Matrac drops a love note to his wife Paula (Michele Morgan) followed by a journalist-war correspondent named Manning (John Loder) being escorted to the hidden Free French base in England. Manning then learns the story behind the Free French operation and some of its men from Freycinet which includes this aforementioned "passage to Marseille" via flashback. This flashback includes a subsequent flashback telling Matrac’s (& Paula’s) story.
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