Every path but your own is the path of fate. Keep on your own track, then. Michael Curtis is a director who is well known to those who are passionate about the old Hollywood of the forties and fifties of the XX century. The cherry on the cake of his creative career is considered by many to be Casablanca (1942), perceived as a kind of example of classical military melodrama. This film is an unimaginable number of times quoted by filmmakers of a later period, streaked on quotes. However, despite the popularity of the film, the name of the director will not be able to name all.
Nevertheless, the surprisingly complete lack of reviews for The Way to Marseille (1944), the original war drama, which starred audience favorite and ubiquitous noir hero Humphrey Bogart. The film occupies a unique place among the films directed by Curtis, as well as its artistic component.
Despite the fact that in the forties in Hollywood was filmed a huge number of war films of a very different nature (fighters, spy thrillers, noirs, melodramas, fantasy and even musicals), “The Way to Marseille” stands out against their background primarily by its construction, original approach to the storytelling. And the point here is not so much in the flashback used by the director as the main artistic technique, but in the originality of his approach. Flashbacks at that time became an incredibly popular attribute of film noir. However, “The Way to Marseille” is like a “flashback in flashback in flashback”, which allows you to vividly and in detail tell the stories of all the main characters of the film, in addition, it is one of the deepest and longest flashbacks in the history of cinema.
As a director, Michael Curtis has always been a strong professional on the one hand and an amazing innovator on the other. Since its formation occurred in the thirties, when the so-called “Star System” flourished in Hollywood, and the producers were the main engine of cinema, it is difficult to talk about any manifestations of “Auteur Cinema” (the so-called author’s film) in relation to the director. Films such as The Wax Museum Mystery (1933) and Doctor X (1932), both technically and artistically breakthrough, testify to the innovative side of his work, while the expensive costume productions The Private Life of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) and Virginia City (1940) reveal him as a sturdy professional who always fought for results. Curtis himself assured that he was primarily interested in human destinies and the opportunity to tell about them on a silver screen.
Perhaps the director’s peculiar apoliticalness was the reason why Curtis was not one of the first to advocate for the opening of the Second Front or criticize the Nazis from the screen (unlike Hitchcock, Mervyn LeRoy or Chaplin himself). Fascinated by expensive productions and respected by producers, the director was relatively late and little engaged in noir (although one can argue here, because some of his early paintings can be considered as so-called “protonoirs” – this is how films shot before the onset of the classical noir era are called). Nevertheless, his talent as a storyteller was fully manifested in the film “The Way to Marseille”.
The main characters in the film are French. This was a fairly common practice in Hollywood in the forties: they shot a movie not only about themselves, but about all the “fighters for the right cause” – the British, Norwegians, Australians and even (sic!) Russians.
The story of a handful of Frenchmen who, for one reason or another (primarily ideological) ended up in a tropical prison on the island of the Devil in French New Guiana and made an escape develops in parallel with the story of the lost ship and its crew, whom the war finds on the high seas. The fates of both are intertwined into one, and they find their purpose.
Perhaps one of the main keys to the success of the film was the actor who played the main role - a tough and not bowed head before the severe trials of a man named Jean Matrak - Humphrey Bogart. In the mid-forties, Bogart was at the peak of popularity, moving from roles in the noir films that brought him popularity to military films. Bogart was not drafted into the army because of his mature age, but he starred in a lot of first-class action films, while performing dangerous tricks himself. The actor masterfully conveys the inner conflict of a strong hero forced to leave his former life in the past for the sake of a high goal.
All the vicissitudes of the plot lead the hero to understand that no matter how you try to escape from fate, fate will always find you, so is it better to go your own way, no matter how hard it is, if this is your Destination.