1944: Passage To Marseille

Passage To Marseille (Curtiz, 1944) 8/10

At Warner Brothers in the 1940's it was hardly uncommon for the studio to capitalize on successful films such as The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca by reuniting cast and crew members in future releases in an attempt to recapture the old magic. After the success of John Huston's 1941 Noir The Maltese Falcon, Warner Brothers mobilized Huston and the film's stars Humphrey Bogart, Sidney Greenstreet and Mary Astor for 1942's wartime film Across The Pacific.

Following the unforeseen commercial success of 1942's Casablanca, Warner Brothers reunited director Michael Curtiz and several cast members including Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Claude Rains and Sidney Greenstreet to participate in a similar themed wartime film 1944's Passage To Marseille: an intricately structured film which synthesizes motifs and elements from Casablanca and Across the Pacific into a rousing action thriller.

Told within a multi-flashback narrative eloquently scripted by Casey Robinson and John and Jack Moffitt, Passage To Marseille concerns the plight of a Free French air squadron working alongside the British army in an attempt to liberate their homeland from Nazi tyranny. The film opens with Manning a British journalist (John Loder) who is secretly whisked off to a secret location in the southern English countryside by the War Office. Manning's job is to cover a story on the Free French fighters who are operating under clandestine conditions at the behest of liason officer Freycinet (Claude Rains).

Intrigued by the rugged face of nearby gunner Jean Matrac (Bogart) , Manning asks Freycinet to tell him about Matrac for his article. Thus, Freycinet recounts a story of how he came to meet Mantrac. Ordered to return from Southeast Asia at the outbreak of war, Freycinet boards a merchant ship along with a group of Petain supporting pro-fascist officers led by Duval (Sidney Greenstreet). While passing through the Atlantic, the ship comes across a canoe adrift in the ocean containing five starving men. Duval is convinced the men have escaped from France's penal institutions in French Guiana known as Devil's Island. But Freycinet, is unsure and begins to inquire into backgrounds of the men including Marius (Peter Lorre), Matrac (Bogart), Garou (Helmut Dantine) Renault (Philip Dorn) and Petit (George Tobias).

Unlike other films of the period, Passage To Marseille is not purely about men destroying the enemy, but the reasons why they fight. With its flashback-within-flashback structure, Passage To Marseille is essentially a character study focusing on themes of patriotism, honour, democracy and ethics. In many ways the film utilizes ideas already displayed in Casablanca and there are scenes which bare an uncanny resemblance such as Freycinet's stance at the airport and Matrac's country drive with his wife Paula (Michele Morgan).

But while Casablanca's Rick is an isolationist American hiding from a former lover in Morocco, Matrac is an embattled leftist journalist who was sent to Devil's Island under false charges by the fascist police. For Rick pragmatism makes good business sense; while for Matrac his idealism and devotion to France has waned: as the France he loves no longer exists. While Rick was jilted by Bergman's Ilsa, Matrac has been betrayed by his country and thus views fighting for it a fruitless task. Yet, as in Casablanca, one can find redemption and atonement for one's past sins through engaging in combat.

The crew of misfits and escapees Matrac belongs to hardly represents a pious and noble crew. Unlike Matrac, these men were vicious and seething prior to their penal exile on Devil's Island. Within their group, there are thieves, murderers and cowards: a rabble which does not impress the ship's strict disciplinarian guest Duval. But despite their past crimes, these men are also first and foremost patriotic and loyal Frenchmen: willing to sacrfice their lives in a bid to erase their past sins. For some this fight is simply to restore their honour after being deserters in the First World War; for others it is to metaphorically reclaim the soil stolen from them by corrupt governments.

This notion of loyalty also extends to the domestic front: demonstrated by Matrac's devotion to his wife and vice-versa through the obedient stream of letters he sends her. Yet, as in war films of the period such as Powell and Pressburger's 49th Parallel, we also see how sedition disguises itself in the form of Greenstreet's Major Duval. A man of purported duty and honour, Duval attempts to assert his authority on Captain Malo's (Victor Francen) vessel, despite the fact he has little actual power to do so. In Duval's regimentation and rash judgment, we see an adversary to the collective democracy espoused by Matrac earlier in his newspaper and in the convicts' system of democratic solidarity.

Shot by master cinematographer James Wong Howe, Passage To Marseille has a gorgeous sweaty and sinister feel to it. Using fluid tracking shots and expressionistic lighting, Wong Howe captures a mood of discontent and vitrol, particularly in the scenes shot at Devil's Island. Infused with articulate dialogue, the film's script while perhaps too verbally formalized rings with the passionate sentimentality, which endeared wartime audiences. While many critics have unfairly compared this Curtiz film with Casablanca, criticisms maligning the film's flashback structure are unfounded. Despite is complexity, Curtiz is able to rein in the various memories of the crew with dynamism. Although the film's special effects vary from awkward to superbly crafted, anyone who remembers the plane flying over Rick's Diner in Casablanca surely cannot proclaim that the footage in Passage to Marseille is anything but a vast improvement.

Similarly other critical rebukes of the film fall into this unfair comparison with Casablanca. Certainly French emigreé in exile Michele Morgan is no Ingrid Bergman, but the minimalist love story included in Passage to Marseille does not infer the same meaning as the relationship between Rick and Ilsa in Casablanca. While Casablanca is focused on a torn relationship to the backdrop of Vichy-occupied Morocco, Passage to Marseille is a film about comraderie and selflessness. The film's best moments of acting are often in quiet, throwaway segments: a bearded Lorre fidgeting in the background; or a lovestruck Bogart clutching Michele Morgan's hand. Thus, the internal intensity of Bogart's Matrac headlines the group's collective outlook, but does not define it. He is but one cog in a giant machine attempting to oust fascism from France.

Evidently, Curtiz's film stereotypes the French as an agrarian people, as noted by the scenes in which the air squadron harvests a field by day that converts into an air strip by night. But then again films like Hitchcock's Quebéc based I, Confess were continually promoting stereotypes of pious Catholic French identity well into the mid-50's as noted by Canadian historian Nicole Neatby in her article Taking Note Of Tourists.

What separates Passage To Marseille from films such as I, Confess and toward future conceptions of French identity is the dark cynicism in its denouément and aesthetic approach. Henri Clouzot would expand upon these in notions in Wages of Fear in his analysis of a world no longer bound by acts of patriotism, but internalized greed. Thus, Passage To Marseille is perhaps a final glimpse of those who were bound by nationalist duty to save and preserve a France, which as Mantrac observes no longer exists.

* Passage To Marseille is available on Warner Brothers Home Video in their Humphrey Bogart: Signature Collection V2

Copyright 2007 8½ Cinematheque