Ticket to Marseille
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Ticket to Marseille |
| Original title | Passage to Marseille |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1944 |
| length | 109 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Michael Curtiz |
| script |
Casey Robinson , Jack Moffitt |
| production | Hal B. Wallis |
| music | Max Steiner |
| camera | James Wong Howe |
| cut | Owen Marks |
| occupation | |
| |
Ticket to Marseille (original title: Passage to Marseille ) is an American adventure film by Michael Curtiz from 1944 with Humphrey Bogart in the leading role. The novel Men Without Country by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall served as a literary model .
action
Capt. Freycinet, the head of a French bomber squadron stationed in England, tells the war correspondent Manning the story of gunner Jean Matrac:
When the Second World War broke out, Freycinet was scheduled to return to France from Southeast Asia on the freighter Ville de Nancy . The French major Duval is also on board. After crossing the Panama Canal , they come across a boat with five emaciated men. These claim to be simple miners traveling from Venezuela to France. However, Duval is convinced that the men fled Devil's Island, a penal colony. However , contrary to Duval's warnings, the captain of the Ville de Nancy , Patain Malo, does not want to tie her up and instead let her be hired on his ship. Later, one of the men named Renault admits to Freycinet that they actually fled Devil's Island. He himself ended up as a deserter on the island, two of the others, Garou and Petit, were banished to the penal colony for murder and manslaughter, another named Marius was a thief. Their leader Matrac, however, was a political prisoner. Due to the terrible conditions on the island, they planned to escape.
It turns out that Matrac was a journalist in France until 1938. As a patriot and anti-fascist he had criticized the Vichy government in his newspaper, which was immediately discontinued. With a woman named Paula he fled to a rural area. They married, but their happiness was short-lived. Matrac was falsely accused of the murder of a reporter and was eventually taken to Devil's Island.
Before fleeing the island, Matrac, Renault and the three other men vowed that they would fight for France if their escape were successful. Freycinet now wants to help them. The Ville de Nancy should actually head for Marseille . Since Captain Malo fears that his cargo could fall into the hands of the Germans there, he agrees to change course and to dock in an English port. Major Duval and several other Vichy supporters want to prevent this from happening, however. They try to take over the ship, but are then overwhelmed by the sailors and Matrac's men. One of Duval's men was able to communicate their position to the Germans via radio, whereupon the freighter was attacked by a German plane. Several men are killed on board before Matrac manages to shoot down the plane. The German pilots survived the crash and try to climb onto the wings of their aircraft floating in the sea, but Matrac shoots them down mercilessly.
After the Ville de Nancy anchored in England, Matrac learns that he has a son with Paula. As a gunner in Freycinet's bomber squadron, he tried to fly over Paula's house in France as often as possible and drop letters to her. One night his plane is badly hit by the Germans. He dies holding a letter to his son, whose patriotic message Freycinet delivers at his funeral.
background
After the great success of Casablanca (1942), Warner Brothers had director Michael Curtiz direct this film, which was also set during the Second World War , for which five actors from Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains , Sydney Greenstreet , Peter Lorre and Helmut Dantine again auditioned were facing the camera. The rights to the novel Men Without Country by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, which was first published in The Atlantic Monthly , cost Warner the then high sum of 75,000 dollars.
Bogart, who absolutely wanted to make the film in order to be able to present himself as a hero to the audience again and to strengthen the morale of the war in America, first had to agree to shoot the film Conflict (1945) for Warner before studio boss Jack L. Warner allowed him assured the main role in Ticket to Marseille . The shooting took place from the end of July to the beginning of November 1943. The film was shot in the Warner Brothers Burbank Studios, where the native German Carl Jules Weyl was responsible for the film construction, and on location in Victorville , where some of the outdoor shots were made.
Ticket to Marseille premiered in New York on February 16, 1944 . Though the convoluted narrative structure of the flashbacks was judged to be very complicated by critics, the film proved to be a box office success, with sales exceeding a million dollars. In Germany, the film was shown for the first time in February 1977 in the original sound with subtitles and dubbed later.
Reviews
For the lexicon of international film , Ticket to Marseille was an "action film whose technical brilliance distracts from the interchangeable good-bad scheme". Cinema described the film as "[i] n complicated flashbacks narrated war drama of patriotism and betrayal". It is a “propaganda classic” that is “tricky” and “superbly made”. Prisma found that the film was "really exciting and skilfully staged as if acted".
Bosley Crowther of the New York Times found the film to be "harsh and violent melodrama," the many flashbacks of which are confusing. The plot of the film also seems “questionable” and “constructed”. Michael Curtiz 'direction is again "heavy" and "melodramatic". According to Variety , the film was consistently played well. However, Claude Rains stands out among the actors. The film critic Leonard Maltin said in retrospect that the film was "ruined" by the confusing flashbacks. The result was “not a bad war film”, but it was “too wordy” and, given the cast, “a disappointment”.
German version
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Jean Matrac | Humphrey Bogart | Joachim Kemmer |
| Capt. Freycinet | Claude Rains | Fritz von Hardenberg |
| Paula Matrac | Michèle Morgan | Madeleine proud |
| Renault | Philip Dorn | Frank Engelhardt |
| Major Duval | Sydney Greenstreet | Herbert Weicker |
| Marius | Peter Lorre | Wolfgang Müller |
| Petit | George Tobias | Thomas Rau |
| Garou | Helmut Dantine | Frank Muth |
| Manning | John Loder | Michael Schwarzmaier |
| Captain Patain Malo | Victor Francen | Reinhard Glemnitz |
| Grandpère | Vladimir Sokoloff | Osman Ragheb |
| Chief mechanic | Eduardo Ciannelli | Peter Thom |
Web links
- Passage to Marseille in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Ticket to Marseille from Turner Classic Movies (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c cf. Joseph D'Onofrio on tcm.com
- ^ Ticket to Marseille. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 27, 2019 .
- ↑ cf. cinema.de
- ↑ cf. prisma.de
- ↑ “For this tough and tempestuous melodrama is something of a sequel […]. Also, the substance of the picture has a dubious, artificial quality. [...] Michael Curtiz has directed the action in a ponderous, melodramatic style. " Bosley Crowther : 'Passage to Marseille,' a Heavy Action Drama in Which Free Frenchmen Figure, With Bogart, at the Hollywood . In: The New York Times , February 17, 1944.
- ↑ See Passage to Marseille . In: Variety , 1944.
- ↑ “WW2 Devil's Island escape film marred by flashback-within-flashback confusion. Not a bad war film, just too talky; a disappointment considering the cast. " Leonard Maltin : Leonard Maltin's 2005 Movie & Video Guide . Plume, 2004, p. 1063.
- ^ Ticket to Marseille. In: synchronkartei.de. German dubbing index , accessed on October 27, 2019 .