Hunky dark Steven Boyd & hunky fair Tony Wright are WWII P.O.W. escapees hiding in Nazi occupied Marseilles as they wait (and wait) for their resistance contact to give the ‘all clear’ on a boat out of France. And while the typical wartime tropes are cleanly handled by underrated Argentinean director Hugo Fregonese (Boyd falling for cute gamine Anna Gaylor; Wright feigning an affair with his lady landlord to get out of a jam; extended confinement making them stir-crazy & reckless), the film also has two wildcard aspects that add real interest: one a miss/one on target. The miss involves a sadistic doctor in town (a weirdly cast James Robertson Justice) pretending to help desperate Allied soldiers, only to drug their cognac for an easy, grisly murder. Apparently fact-based, so too a second outlier idea where Nazi frustration over controlling Marseilles’ Old Town (think The Casbah in PÉPÉ LE MOKO*), safe home to Anti-Nazi hold-outs, leads to annihilation. Unable to penetrate the odd design of its cuckoo architecture and maze-like layout, they choose to blow up the entire arrondissement. And since they’re Germans, it was documented with lots of archival footage incorporated in the film's climax. It adds a fresh angle to an old story; technically well integrated for the period, too.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *As per this French poster, definitely The Casbah of Marseilles. (Avoid the Stateside cut, THE BEASTS OF MARSEILLES, which lops off about 25".)
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