Pretty cool WWII story, told mostly through flashbacks, about French convicts led by Humphrey Bogart who escape from Devil's Island to go help their country fight the Nazis. The men are picked up by a freighter bound for home and must deal with slimy Sydney Greenstreet, who isn't particularly opposed to the idea of a Nazi-occupied France.Reunites Casablanca costars Bogart, Rains, Lorre, and Greenstreet with director Michael Curtiz. In many ways, this could be seen as a possible sequel to Casablanca, though certainly not in that film's league. I could see where you could rework the story to be about Rick, Ilsa, and Louis' post-Casablanca story. Cute use of models in early scene where the war correspondent arrives to speak with Claude Rains. This movie is slammed a lot for its use of the flashback-within-a-flashback-within-a-flashback technique. Normally I'm not a fan of that myself but here I didn't think it was confusing like critics claim. The ending is kind of depressing but realistic. War is hell, after all.

Passage to Marseille (1944) *** (out of 4) Big-budget Warner war film about a group of Devil's Island escapees who join up with the French to battle Germans. I had held off on watching this film for many years expecting your typical WWII drama but that's certainly not what I got as the movie is quite different from other movies and in the end it comes off quite fresh and original. The movie is pretty much told via one flashback after another as we jump around in the story but this never get confusing as the screenplay perfectly builds off everything that happened earlier in the movie. We have Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre playing two of the escaped convicts and getting to know their backstory just added to everything that would follow when it came time to escape and then when it came time to fight. The film has an all-star cast that not only has Bogart and Lorre but we also get Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, George Tobias, Philip Dorn, Michele Morgan, John Loder and several other familiar character actors from the studio. The performances by the entire cast are very good but the film clearly belongs to Bogart who once again proves he was one of the all-time great tough guys. Only Bogart could pull off a role like this because he makes you understand why he hates his country yet, at the same time, you can tell that deep down he's going to have courage and be ready to fight when that time comes. Towards the end of the film when everyone is on a boat, which is about to be taken over by the Germans, a great battle follows and this entire sequence contains one great action piece after another and in the middle of it all is Bogart and you believe everything he does. The rest of the cast are all good and add a lot of entertainment to the film as one would expect from such veterans. Curtiz once again shows why he's one of the most underrated director's in the history of this era as he not only handles the action sequences but he also does a marvelous job with the quieter moments and he's perfectly capable of letting the drama build up over time. Many people have called this CASABLANCA-light as this film has pretty much all of the same talent behind it but it's really unfair to compare the two films as they are quite different on all levels. This film here certainly isn't a masterpiece but this is still a very solid action film that deserves a better reputation than it has.

One of several attempts to recapture the magic of Casablanca, Passage to Marseille brings back a number of the principals but fails to live up to its potential.We begin with a journalist's visit to a Free French air base in Britain during the Second World War from which we flash back to story of Matrac (Humphrey Bogart) a gunner on one of the bombers about leave on a mission and how he came to be there. The French officer being interviewed by the journalist is played by Claude Rains and the flashback introduces both Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Also returning from Casablanca is the somewhat overlooked but remarkably successful director Michael Curtiz.The biggest deficiency appears to be the story. The flashback within a flashback structure may not be entirely to blame but the fact we know the outcome to most of the important questions before hand definitely dilutes the tension of the picture. The characters lack sufficient or appropriate motivation in several cases and others do not seem to earn the redemption it appears we are meant to feel for them, Bogart's character gets better treatment but the setup for his background is rather perfunctory.In terms of strengths it is certainly enjoyable to see such performers as Bogart, Rains, Greenstreet and Lorre, even if their talents are not adequately used and the roles are lacking. Also not surprisingly the visuals are impressive thanks likely both to cinematographer James Wong Howe and director Michael Curtiz.The viewpoints of the characters are also interesting in that this film was made during the war, not surprisingly we get a rather uncompromising view of collaborators but we also get a fairly frank depiction of the brutalities of war on behalf of the allies.This serves as good illustration about how remarkable a film like Casablanca was, with many of the same principals and a story with a number of parallels we get an entirely different result.

A year after the studio's success with "Casablanca," Warner Brothers evidently thought that lightening would strike twice with the same formula. Thus, producer Hal B. Wallis reunited the same director, Michael Curtiz, and many of the same actors, Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Helmut Dantine, and even the cabaret singer, Corinna Mura, from the prior-year's Oscar winner. The studio then hired Michele Morgan, who, like Ingrid Bergman, was a European actress with an accent, and the soundtrack was peppered with the stirring French national anthem, "La Marseilles," that had been used so effectively in the 1943 classic. Even the name of another exotic city was inserted in the title. The pot was stirred with a script based on a Nordoff and Hall novel, and the result was "Passage to Marseille." While "Passage to Marseille" is often an entertaining film, the 1944 movie is no "Casablanca." Although much has been made of its complex nest of flashbacks within flashbacks, the structure is not difficult to follow, especially for modern audiences accustomed to movies that utilize fractured time or stories that are told in reverse. While Bogart and Morgan also have Paris, the relationship between Jean and Paula does not resonate like that between Rick and Ilsa. The romance between the couple has less screen time than that in "Casablanca," and the third party in the triangle is not Paul Henreid, but rather Bogart's crusading patriotism. Instead of an unforgettable romance, most of "Marseille" takes place among men on the high seas or in a tropical prison camp, and the plot provides enough action to sustain interest throughout. However, like the success that "Mrs. Miniver" had in raising awareness of the British struggle against the Germans, Warner Brothers attempted herein to boost the profile of the French resistance with the American movie-going public. Thus, "Marseille" focuses on the patriotism of the French, and the desire of Frenchmen everywhere to liberate their homeland from the Nazis. The credibility may have been stretched a bit, however, because, after the cruel and unjust treatment that Bogart and his fellow prisoners suffer at the hands of French authorities, their desire to fight for France is difficult to comprehend.However, despite credibility problems, a flawed and contradictory central character in Jean Matrac, and a structure that reportedly is difficult for some to follow, "Passage to Marseille" is solid entertainment in the World War II morale-booster genre. Of course any film with Bogart, Rains, Lorre, and Greenstreet is worth seeing, but one that has also been expertly helmed by Michael Curtiz, strikingly photographed by James Wong Howe, and scored by Max Steiner has to be several cuts above other movies from the period. If not quite "Casablanca," "Passage to Marseille" is still solid entertainment.