Passage to Marseille (1944)

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 | England | Murder | Marseille

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:

Warner Bros. built a full-scale Merchant Marine ship in three months, modeled after the French ship Ville de Nancy.

Goofs:

Factual errors: We see the plane during bombing runs being attacked by anti-aircraft artillery and fighters at the same time. This would not happen as the fighters would stay outside the area when AAA is firing on the planes; as they would be shot down by their own guns.

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 Becoming Attractions: The Trailers of Humphrey Bogart (1997) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Someday I'll Meet You Again

Bogart's character not always saintly

I think some people have been unduly unfair on this film.

There is quite a complex sequence of flashbacks. But as a matter of fact, I didn't find them at all difficult to follow. My brain only hurts when I try to work it out afterwards. Maybe it's another of those things which work better in a cinema than on TV.

There is a scene where Bogart's character commits a war crime. I think we have to remember that Bogart did not always play saintly characters. He was not exactly saintly in the "Maltese Falcon" or "Casablanca". He was even less saintly in "The Caine Mutiny". I am sure that the audience in 1944 would have been shocked by the war crime just as we are

now; even Nazi propaganda sometimes emphasised the importance of being gentlemanly to prisoners. The easy and boring option would have been for

Bogart to play the all-American (or all-French) hero throughout; I find it

more interesting that in this case he isn't. I think the circumstances to some extent explain what Bogart's character does. The fact is war crimes happen in war. They happened then, and they happen now, and the perpetrators are not as through-and-through evil (or different from us) as we would like to think.

I agree with those who say this film is not as good as "Casablanca" or the "Maltese Falcon". The plot is a lot more lumpy and uneven than those films. But I've seen those two films several times already, and I can't watch them every night. "Passage to Marseille" is worth at least one viewing. In fact I would like to see it again, if I get a chance.