Passage to Marseilles

Humphrey Bogart headlines this 1944 wartime drama, reuniting with his Casablanca director Michael Curtiz and costars Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, and Peter Lorre in a production that packs several genres into a single film. Opening on an Air Force squadron of Free French fighters hidden in the countryside, Passage to Marseilles segues into a sea drama, a prison escape thriller, a war movie, and even features a deck brawl that echoes a pirate clash, all nestled into the main storyline through flashbacks and plot twists. Bogart's story takes him to pre-war Marseilles, where his crusading newspaper publisher is framed for murder by the Fascists, and to Devil's Island where he meets his fellow patriots. This is shameless wartime propaganda, a rousing call to arms to free Europe from the Nazis and turncoat collaborators (all presented as martinets with Fascist sympathies), but it is also action-packed and enormously entertaining. And Curtiz and cinematographer James Wong Howe beautifully create the locations—from Devil's Island to a cargo freighter on the high seas—entirely in the studio. Extras include the Oscar-nominated short "Jammin' the Blues" featuring Lester Young, a "Night at the Movies" collection (featuring a newsreel, short subject, cartoon, and trailers from 1944), and a Warner Bros. studio blooper reel. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)