Passage to Marseille (1944)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Michael Curtiz

Writers:

Casey Robinson (screenplay) and
Jack Moffitt (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

11 March 1944 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Adventure | War

Plot:

As French bomber crews prepare an air raid from a base in England, we learn the story of Matrac, a French journalist who opposed the Munich Pact...

Plot Keywords:

Ship | French | Murder | Escape | Devil's Island

Cast

Humphrey Bogart	...	Jean Matrac
Claude Rains	...	Captain Freycinet
Michèle Morgan	...	Paula Matrac (as Michele Morgan)
Philip Dorn	...	Renault
Sydney Greenstreet	...	Major Duval
Peter Lorre	...	Marius
George Tobias	...	Petit
Helmut Dantine	...	Garou
John Loder	...	Manning
Victor Francen	...	Captain Patain Malo
Vladimir Sokoloff	...	Grandpere
Eduardo Ciannelli	...	Chief Engineer (as Edward Ciannelli)
Corinna Mura	...	Singer

Runtime:

109 min | France:75 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | French | German | Spanish

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (RCA Sound System)

Certification:

Canada:PG (video rating) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | USA:Approved (certificate #9359) | USA:TV-PG (TV rating)

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles County Arboretum & Botanic Garden - 301 N. Baldwin Avenue, Arcadia, California, USA

Company:

Warner Bros. Pictures

Trivia:

One of the few films to employ a flashback within a flashback within a flashback. This film is often seen as an attempt to recapture the magic of Casablanca (1942), to which many key players were also a part of. Some "usual suspects" include director Michael Curtiz, stars Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains, supporting and bit players Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Helmut Dantine and Corinna Mura, writer Casey Robinson, composer Max Steiner, producer Hal B. Wallis and executive producer Jack L. Warner (both films were made by the studio Warner Bros.). Also, Michèle Morgan was originally cast as Ilsa in Casablanca (1942), but her salary demand was too big, so Ingrid Bergman was cast instead.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Mattrac is pointing his fifty cal. machine gun out the waist gun window, we hear machine gun sounds, but the gun is not firing. The 50 cal. M2 machine gun produces a great deal of vibration when it is being fired. The gun did not vibrate one bit.

Quotes:

Jean Matrac: Funny how much more you can say with a few bars of music then a basket full of words.

Movie Connections:

Featured in You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story (2008) (V)

Soundtrack:

La Marseillaise

Good but not great war film

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.