Film Review: Passage to Marseille (1944)

Casablanca is arguably the most iconic of all the films of the Classic Hollywood era and one of the best‑known films in the entire history of cinema. Because of that, any idea of shooting a sequel or having it remade was greeted as sacrilege not only by cinephiles but also by the general public. Hollywood studios, which would have little hesitation in doing so with almost all other films, were forced to make very indirect remakes like Barb Wire or merely pay homage with a reference or two in unrelated films.

However, only two years after Casablanca came Passage to Marseille, a film that could be described as its spiritual sequel thanks to having a similar setting, theme, cast and director Michael Curtiz. The film is based on Men Without Country, a 1942 novel by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall. The plot begins in England during the Second World War where journalist Manning (played by John Loder) visits the base of a Free French air squadron operating B‑17 Flying Fortress bombers that fly missions over Nazi Germany. Captain Fraycinet (played by Claude Rains), one of its commanders, begins to tell the tale of how he met some of his men.

The story, told in flashback, switches to the first year of the war when Fraycinet was transferred from New Caledonia to Marseille and had to spend a long time travelling on a tramp steamer, Ville de Nancy. In late Spring 1940 the ship rescues five men from a small canoe that was drifting in the Caribbean Sea. Fraycinet suspects that the men are convicts who have escaped from the infamous penal colony in French Guiana. The men admit that they are indeed convicts and explain that their escape was motivated less by a desire for freedom and more by patriotism and the conviction that they could redeem themselves if they fought for their country against the Germans. Their leader is Jean Matrac (played by Humphrey Bogart), a newspaper editor who was wrongfully sentenced for manslaughter after making enemies in pre‑war France with his passionate critique of the Munich Agreement.

Passage to Marseille was made while the war was still raging and, like all Hollywood films made after the US entry into the conflict, it served propaganda purposes. While Casablanca celebrated anti‑fascist resistance in general, using the North African city under Vichy French control as an exotic setting, this film was more focused on France and its citizens who had refused to reconcile with humiliating defeat and enemy occupation—which was still going on during the film’s production. Inevitable comparisons between the two films show that the propaganda in the latter film is much cruder, with characters lacking complexity and being simply divided into villains (like the treacherous pro‑German officer played by Sidney Greenstreet) and heroes (more or less anybody else).

This lack of complexity reflects on the protagonist, who is played by a somewhat disinterested Humphrey Bogart (whose marriage to his third wife Mayo Methot was falling apart at the time). It is Claude Rains who actually serves as the proper protagonist and whose character holds the film together. His role is even more important due to the narrative technique of “a flashback within a flashback”, which was relatively rare at the time and which some critics and part of the audience found confusing. The rest of the cast is more than solid and implicitly underlines the major motif of propaganda war against Nazism as an international effort by featuring actors from different countries—Dutch actor Philip Dorn as one of the convicts, Russian actor Vladimir Sokoloff as an elderly convict, and Belgian actor Victor Francen as the ship’s captain. French film star Michèle Morgan, the beautiful actress who was supposed to be Bogart’s partner in Casablanca instead of Ingrid Bergman, is here reduced to playing the generic role of love interest, wife and mother.

From a technical standpoint, Passage to Marseille is a well‑made film. The black‑and‑white cinematography by veteran James Wong Howe is superb and accompanied by an effective music soundtrack by Max Steiner. Curtiz, who did a great job with Casablanca, is adequate here and he easily brings to life many scenes taking place in different countries and continents, while actually all being shot in California. Most impressive is the spectacular action scene near the end when Ville de Nancy has to endure an attack by a Focke‑Wulf 200, a German naval bomber.

Yet, all this skill cannot overcome deficiencies in the script that make Passage to Marseille too preachy and overlong. The scene in which the protagonist murders downed German airmen instead of taking them prisoner is not going to sit well with some modern sentiments, and few people would accept Bogart playing someone who could easily be described as a war criminal. This scene was disturbing even during the war itself and was actually cut by censors in many countries.

Passage to Marseille had more than solid box‑office results, but it is now considered one of the more obscure parts of Bogart’s filmography. Although they might enjoy a solid film, many of today’s viewers would likely become aware of why that happened.

RATING: 6/10 (++)

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