Justin de Marseille (1935) - film review

Marseilles in the 1930s.   A respected gangster, Justin, finds himself in a deadly feud with his rival, the unscrupulous Esposito.  The latter plans to steal a cargo of opium bound for China and to have Justin killed.  The scheme backfires, and Justin and his cohorts flee with the stolen drugs.  Later, Justin saves a young woman, Totone, from drowning, and she is easily seduced by his charms.  Her jealous lover, Sylvio, tries to kill Justin, but again the murder attempt is thwarted.  Justin decides it is time for a final showdown with Esposito...

With its interminable gangster brawls and familiar good guy-bad guy crooks, Justin de Marseille is typical of the 1930s gangster movie which became popular on both sides of the Atlantic before World War II.  Although most of the film is an obvious pastiche of its American counterpart, it does contain elements of what would now be considered film noir, and in some respects the film is ahead of its time, particularly in its extensive and imaginative use of real locations.

The film was directed by Maurice Tourneur, who gained his reputation whilst working in American between 1914 and 1926.  Disillusioned with the American filmmaking process, Tourneur returned to France and made a number of films which, although less striking artistically, were more commercially successful. He was greatly influenced by the expressionist tradition of the silent era, as can be seen by his bold use of shadows and harsh lighting in vitually all of his films, most strikingly in the horror classic La Main du diable (1943).   After his retirement from filmmaking (caused by a car accident in 1949), Tourneur spent the remainder of his career translating detective novels into French.

© James Travers 2002

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