An above average, if inexpensive, Warner Brothers war-time movie about the Free French in England. Five French convicts manage to escape from Devil's Island with the help of Grandpere, a patriotic ex-convict who has managed to save enough money to buy the escapees a canoe. He makes them promise that when they escape they will fight the Germans who have occupied France. All but Bogart take the oath.
What a bunch of Frenchmen they are too. Grandpere is a Russian. The rest of the group include a New York Episcopalian, one Slovakian Jew, one Jew from New York, a Dutchman, and an Austrian anti-Nazi. That's Warners for you. As long as they had an accent they could be anything. George Tobias does decently by his French accent. Bogart isn't required to try.
It's a decent movie -- full of propaganda of course, but well acted and thoroughly dramatic, written by Nordoff and Hall ("Mutiny on the Bounty") and directed by craftsman Michael Curtiz. The picture is deadly serious. When a German aircraft attacks the freighter the convicts are on, Bogart not only helps shoot it down but then machine guns the helpless German crew as they climb onto the wings of the wrecked plane. It's a brutal scene today, and probably was at the time.
The structure is a little complicated. There is a flashback within a flashback, for instance. (I think one of the narrators is named Marlow. Is this an echo of Conrad?) But we never get lost. There is an action scene near the beginning, in which Free French flying fortresses bomb occupied France and fight off German planes, but most of the film is taken up with the journey made by the convicts from Cayenne to the French airfield in the English countryside.
The film is studio bound and the maritime scenes are tank bound, but art direction is up to Warners' standards and sometimes looks better than the real thing. Makeup did a fine job too.
A bitter and efficient movie. Worth catching.
What a bunch of Frenchmen they are too. Grandpere is a Russian. The rest of the group include a New York Episcopalian, one Slovakian Jew, one Jew from New York, a Dutchman, and an Austrian anti-Nazi. That's Warners for you. As long as they had an accent they could be anything. George Tobias does decently by his French accent. Bogart isn't required to try.
It's a decent movie -- full of propaganda of course, but well acted and thoroughly dramatic, written by Nordoff and Hall ("Mutiny on the Bounty") and directed by craftsman Michael Curtiz. The picture is deadly serious. When a German aircraft attacks the freighter the convicts are on, Bogart not only helps shoot it down but then machine guns the helpless German crew as they climb onto the wings of the wrecked plane. It's a brutal scene today, and probably was at the time.
The structure is a little complicated. There is a flashback within a flashback, for instance. (I think one of the narrators is named Marlow. Is this an echo of Conrad?) But we never get lost. There is an action scene near the beginning, in which Free French flying fortresses bomb occupied France and fight off German planes, but most of the film is taken up with the journey made by the convicts from Cayenne to the French airfield in the English countryside.
The film is studio bound and the maritime scenes are tank bound, but art direction is up to Warners' standards and sometimes looks better than the real thing. Makeup did a fine job too.
A bitter and efficient movie. Worth catching.