Cheap Passage to Marseilles (Video) (Michael Curtiz) Price

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Customer Reviews of Passage to Marseilles

Wartime propaganda
If TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT was a direct descendent of CASABLANCA, then this picture too was an attempt to cash in on the success (or parts of it) of that beauty. But it's a poor relative. Told as a flashback within a flashback, a group of convicts escapes from Devil's Island in order to go to France to fight the Nazis; their leader is Bogie who confesses he doesn't really want to go back to France to fight, but rather for a woman. But of course his conscience is put to the test and he gets his thinking straightened out. This scene, which takes place on a ship under enemy air attack, and the earlier scenes in the first flashback when Bogie's in Paris with his girl, are right out of CASABLANCA. But Michelle Morgan is no Ingrid Bergman, though Peter Lorre, Claude Rains, and Sidney Greenstreet (as a heavy) all appear again. The ending, when Rains reads a letter from the now-dead Bogie to his wife about Free France rising up to defeat the Germans, is pure sentimental propaganda. Not nearly as good as the earlier movies mentioned.

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Another WB/Curtiz/Bogart classic
Yes, it's dated all right-in the best sense: it's got virtually the same cast and crew as "Casablanca"(though Michele Morgan is no Ingrid Bergman, lovely though she is-and as someone else pointed out, hers *is* a thankless role in an all-male film). It's full of action, suspense, atmosphere(the famous huge tank built on a WB sound stage a few years earlier really comes in handy, as much of the action takes place on ships and boats)-and humor, to temper the super-patriotic slant of the plot-after all, it was mid-war, and it was total war. Even so, Bogart's character is allowed to be somewhat ambivilent, which makes for a suprisingly timely impression all these years later. There are situations and dialogue which with any other cast would be unbearably corny, but in the capable hands of such as Bogie, Claude Rains, Greenstreet and Lorre, they're memorable, sometimes priceless moments. One example: On the eve of their escape, huddled in the dark next to a campfire, aged Devil's Island prisoner "Grandpere", suspects his fellow escapees(especially Bogart) might be less than sincere, and thinks he ought to elicit something more binding than a simple promise that they'll all fight for "La France" when they reach freedom. With perfect comic timing, Peter Lorre whines incredulously: "Do you want us to say our beads?!". Takes the corn right out of the sentimental scene. <
> This film is famous for containing "a flashback within a flashback WITHIN a flashback!" as film writer Leslie Halliwell pointed out in his book; it's nevertheless a slam-bang piece of entertainment.

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They don't make movies like this anymore!
Ever since Casablanca, this movie made in its wake was considered a disappointment, but I enjoyed it just as much, if not better! I'm not a particular Bogart fan, but I really liked him in this movie...his role befits him: hardened, determined, yet with deep passion in spite of his steely exterior. During the film, his life takes several turns: as a newspaper printer, a hard labor prisoner, a refuge on a French military ship, and a hero for France. He loves his wife, and he loves his country, and in spite of the injustice he suffered in France, he vows to fight against the Nazis to save her.

The first few minutes of the film in which there is a lot of talk is somewhat dull, but then we are launched into the telling of the adventures and dangers of sentenced men escaping from French Guyana in a little boat provided by another older prisoner, who gives up his own escape to allow the few younger men the room in the boat, and a chance to fight for France. There is plenty of adventure, and some sweet romance which our hero has with his wife, and a touching ending.

Is the movie unrealistic? Is it melodramatic? Is it wartime propaganda? Maybe to some people, but I loved it!