Imagine a movie made at Warner Brothers in the early 1940s, when they were at their peak. A movie directed by Michael Curtiz, when he was at his peak. Starring Humphrey Bogart, when he was at his peak. Co-starring Claude Raines, Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, etc., etc. You'd say that would be a formula not just for a good movie, but for a GREAT movie. After all, it had produced Casablanca. How could it fail?
In part the problem is the script. It tells its story very poorly, with no pacing. (Even though Curtiz directed it? Yes, even though Curtiz directed it.) The characters are flat and uninteresting, even though played by great actors. Bogart's character, Matrac, for example, has every reason to hate what he calls the French fascists after they arrest him and sentence him to Devil's Island. Yet in the final scene, the big action scene, he vents his uncontrolled rage on German soldiers. It would have made more sense if he had directed it at Sidney Greenstreet's character, for example.
In general, the dialogue is often wooden and/or preachy.
There's no point in comparing Michele Morgan to Ingrid Bergman. Morgan has few scenes and no good dialogue.
The only scene that held me was the final attack on the ship by a German bomber. It wasn't great, but you do, of course, cheer at the end when the French hit the bomber and it goes down. I was surprised, though, that Bogart guns the survivors down, despite the ship captain's protest. Why was that included? To show that he was overcome with hatred? Why? The Germans had never done anything to him.
The point of this movie was clearly to show Americans in early 1944, as we were getting ready to land at Normandy, that, despite the 1940 armistice, most Frenchmen were courageous, patriotic, anti-Nazi, and therefore worth liberating. (Reunion in France is a better example of that.) The problem is that none of the men are played by French actors. Humphrey Bogart, Claude Raines, Peter Lorre, etc., never for a moment convince you that they're French, or even try to do so, so their courage never makes you admire the French.
And, at the end, when Claude Raines reads the letter written by the now deceased Bogart and it goes ON and ON and ON in a style that his five year old child could never have understood, you wonder HOW Curtiz could possibly have allowed that. After all, we're talking about the director of some of the most exciting movies of all time, like the Adventures of Robin Hood and the Sea Hawk, not to mention Casablanca. The letter is so preachy.
But it's also very pacifist in a certain way, which makes it hard to understand why Daladier's support of the Munich Agreement is so vehemently condemned early in the movie. (See below.)
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I just watched this movie again, four years after writing the above review. I confess I didn't like the movie any better the second time.
One thing I found strange this time was Matrac's politics and the movie's support to them.
Matrac starts off as a leftist, anti-Fascist French newspaper reporter, not unlike Rick in Casablanca. In 1938 he writes an article condemning Daladier (the French prime minister) for signing the Munich Agreement along with England's Neville Chamberlain. This agreement ceded the Sudatenland, part of what was then Checkoslovakia, to Germany, in an attempt to avoid all-out war. The movie depicts Daladier - who was long out of power by 1944, when this movie was made - as a Fascist for signing the agreement. Matrac's paper is subsequently ransacked by thugs, who are also described as Fascists, while the police, who are also described as Fascists, look on indifferently.
I found this very strange. Daladier was anything but a Fascist. He was responsible for major rearmament against Germany in the last months leading up to the war, and as a result was imprisoned by the Pétainist government after they came to power in 1940. Why would Jack Warner have wanted to present Daladier as a collaborator with Germany?
In the same respect, early in the movie some of the characters wonder how much Pétain was siding with Hitler, and dismiss him as an old man, blaming the collaboration of France on the prime minister, Pierre Laval. Why would Jack Warner want to have shifted blame from Pétain, who was certainly aware of what he was doing, but inculpate Daladier? I found this strange.
The chronology is also strange. Matrac - "matrac" is a billy club in French - gets in trouble after writing his condemnation of the Munich Agreement, which was signed 30 September, 1938. Pétain signed the armistice, to which reference is made while Matrac and the other convicts are on the Ville de Nice, on 23 June, 1940. Since the convicts had been at sea 20 days before being rescued by the Ville de Nice, that leaves only 20 months between Matrac's being falsely accused of murder and his escape from Devil's Island, considerably less actually, since he gets married after his paper is ransacked and spends some time with his wife before he is arrested. Say 19 months. There must have been a trial, etc., before he was sent out to Cayenne, so he was probably not on Devil's Island much more than a year. Though I'm sure a year seemed like an eternity to prisoners there, the movie gives the impression he was there a lot longer than that.
In part the problem is the script. It tells its story very poorly, with no pacing. (Even though Curtiz directed it? Yes, even though Curtiz directed it.) The characters are flat and uninteresting, even though played by great actors. Bogart's character, Matrac, for example, has every reason to hate what he calls the French fascists after they arrest him and sentence him to Devil's Island. Yet in the final scene, the big action scene, he vents his uncontrolled rage on German soldiers. It would have made more sense if he had directed it at Sidney Greenstreet's character, for example.
In general, the dialogue is often wooden and/or preachy.
There's no point in comparing Michele Morgan to Ingrid Bergman. Morgan has few scenes and no good dialogue.
The only scene that held me was the final attack on the ship by a German bomber. It wasn't great, but you do, of course, cheer at the end when the French hit the bomber and it goes down. I was surprised, though, that Bogart guns the survivors down, despite the ship captain's protest. Why was that included? To show that he was overcome with hatred? Why? The Germans had never done anything to him.
The point of this movie was clearly to show Americans in early 1944, as we were getting ready to land at Normandy, that, despite the 1940 armistice, most Frenchmen were courageous, patriotic, anti-Nazi, and therefore worth liberating. (Reunion in France is a better example of that.) The problem is that none of the men are played by French actors. Humphrey Bogart, Claude Raines, Peter Lorre, etc., never for a moment convince you that they're French, or even try to do so, so their courage never makes you admire the French.
And, at the end, when Claude Raines reads the letter written by the now deceased Bogart and it goes ON and ON and ON in a style that his five year old child could never have understood, you wonder HOW Curtiz could possibly have allowed that. After all, we're talking about the director of some of the most exciting movies of all time, like the Adventures of Robin Hood and the Sea Hawk, not to mention Casablanca. The letter is so preachy.
But it's also very pacifist in a certain way, which makes it hard to understand why Daladier's support of the Munich Agreement is so vehemently condemned early in the movie. (See below.)
-------------------
I just watched this movie again, four years after writing the above review. I confess I didn't like the movie any better the second time.
One thing I found strange this time was Matrac's politics and the movie's support to them.
Matrac starts off as a leftist, anti-Fascist French newspaper reporter, not unlike Rick in Casablanca. In 1938 he writes an article condemning Daladier (the French prime minister) for signing the Munich Agreement along with England's Neville Chamberlain. This agreement ceded the Sudatenland, part of what was then Checkoslovakia, to Germany, in an attempt to avoid all-out war. The movie depicts Daladier - who was long out of power by 1944, when this movie was made - as a Fascist for signing the agreement. Matrac's paper is subsequently ransacked by thugs, who are also described as Fascists, while the police, who are also described as Fascists, look on indifferently.
I found this very strange. Daladier was anything but a Fascist. He was responsible for major rearmament against Germany in the last months leading up to the war, and as a result was imprisoned by the Pétainist government after they came to power in 1940. Why would Jack Warner have wanted to present Daladier as a collaborator with Germany?
In the same respect, early in the movie some of the characters wonder how much Pétain was siding with Hitler, and dismiss him as an old man, blaming the collaboration of France on the prime minister, Pierre Laval. Why would Jack Warner want to have shifted blame from Pétain, who was certainly aware of what he was doing, but inculpate Daladier? I found this strange.
The chronology is also strange. Matrac - "matrac" is a billy club in French - gets in trouble after writing his condemnation of the Munich Agreement, which was signed 30 September, 1938. Pétain signed the armistice, to which reference is made while Matrac and the other convicts are on the Ville de Nice, on 23 June, 1940. Since the convicts had been at sea 20 days before being rescued by the Ville de Nice, that leaves only 20 months between Matrac's being falsely accused of murder and his escape from Devil's Island, considerably less actually, since he gets married after his paper is ransacked and spends some time with his wife before he is arrested. Say 19 months. There must have been a trial, etc., before he was sent out to Cayenne, so he was probably not on Devil's Island much more than a year. Though I'm sure a year seemed like an eternity to prisoners there, the movie gives the impression he was there a lot longer than that.