Passage to Marseille

My favorite TV show is Lost which used flashbacks for most of four seasons in its storytelling. I like the reasoning because it gives background without devoting whole seasons to character back stories. The same goes for movies where a 2 or 3 minute flashback can accomplish what a prequel might have been able to do. Of course, with anything good you can take it too far like 1944's Passage to Marseille, an otherwise enjoyable movie set in WWII.

Working off a novel as his source, director Michael Curtiz delivers a movie that at any number of times is juggling 4 different storylines courtesy of a flashbacks; Free French squadron in England, French ship traveling from South America to France, pre-war character stories, and a desperate prison escape from Devil's Island. The plotlines are never confusing, but at certain points I wanted to groan as the screen went fuzzy for another flashback. Reading up about the novel, it seems Curtiz stayed pretty faithful to his subject matter, but could this have been better as four different movies, a huge series? Quite possibly, but that probably would have cost significantly more cash that's not mine.

'Marseille' opens with a great framing device in the middle of WWII as a war correspondent (John Loder) visits a Free French bomber squadron in England where he meets their liasion officer, Freznet (Claude Rains). The writer is curious about one of the machine gunners on one of the bombers, a man named Matrac (Humphrey Bogart). So starts Flashback 1 with Freznet recapping how he met Matrac years before. Sailing from South America to France aboard Capt. Marlowe's (Victor Francen) ship, a little canoe is found floating at sea with five people aboard (Bogart, Peter Lorre, George Tobias, Helmut Dantine, and Phillip Dorn). Freznet figures out these five are Devil's Island escapees trying to get back to fight for their native France. But not so fast, WWII has broken out and France has signed an armistice with Germany.

A French officer, Major Duval (Sydney Greenstreet), onboard wants to deliver the ship to Marseille with its shipment of nickel ore, while Capt. Marlowe intends to head for England and join the war effort. A mutiny looks to be impossible to avoid with the five Devil's Island convicts playing a deciding factor. Sounds like a pretty decent story, doesn't it? We're not done yet with flashbacks to the Devil's Island escape and then Bogie's background as to how he ended up in prison. So here's the basic, during WWII Rains is telling a story about Bogie, who's tellling a story about Devil's Island who's telling a story about Bogie being sent to prison. I'm tired just writing about it.

Besides the mangled story structure (I'm not sure how a linear story could have been done), this was a solid movie all around. The casting is impeccable even if Bogie is an odd choice as a patriotic Frenchman. Thankfully, he makes no attempt at a French accent. Still, Bogart is as an iconic figure as Hollywood ever produced, and he's as calmly cool as he ever was. His backstory with his wife Paula (Michele Morgan) is needed to balance out the changes his character makes as he goes from a newspaperman denouncing the French government to a convict to a patriotic Frenchman. The rest of the cast is pretty nuts with Rains very solid leading a strong ensemble. Vladimir Sokoloff makes quite an impression too as a free man let out of the French penal system who aids the escape effort.

Made two years after Casablanca, 'Marseille' features a boatload of connections, starting with Bogart starring and Rains, Greenstreet and Lorre in supporting roles with Curtiz directing. It definitely has the feel of Casablanca with the war setting serving as a backdrop to an exciting story. Overdone at times -- mostly due to the choppy story courtesy of the flashbacks -- but still a solid movie. Youtube has it available to watch, starting here with Part 1 of 11. See if you can keep up.

Passage to Marseille <----trailer (1944): ***/****