the audience applauded

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

SEVEN THUNDERS is a long-forgotten wartime effort that shines a light on one of the darkest events to befall Vichy France. The story is set in the slums of Marseilles, where one particular district provides a haunt for Jews and British hiding out from their Nazi oppressors who are always on the hunt for them. The upshot being that the slums were eventually dynamited, by the Nazis as depicted in this movie.This film is something of a ponderous effort that could do with a bit more suspense in order to keep the slow pace from flagging. The huge tableau of characters means that it's difficult to get to know any one in particular, or indeed sympathise with the individual. Stephen Boyd has something of an action man role, brawling with a Nazi goon on a rooftop in one stand-out action scene, and the rest is a muddle of romantic moments, plot twists, and some mild horror elements. James Robertson Justice is cast against type as a sinister doctor with a fine line in murder and disposing of the bodies of his victims in the quicklime he keeps in the cellar!

Steven Boyd and his friend, Tony Wright, have escape from a German POW camp during World War II and have made their way to Marseilles, where they find temporary shelter in the shabby apartment of a sympathizer. The apartment is shabby because it's in the Old Quarter of Marseilles, and ALL of the Old Quarter is made up on tiny crooked streets and decrepit buildings.Boyd and Wright are initially intent on getting out of Marseilles and back to their own lines but things get a little complicated when Boyd takes up with a sassy blond a la gamin and Wright strikes up a friendship with a middle-aged married lady who is, like Wright himself, a Londoner. The Nazi occupiers mostly avoid the Old Quarter because it's corrupt and dangerous. Too many soldiers sneak off to the whorehouse or decide to desert or simply disappear. Boyd and a fat, ugly, unambiguously mean Nazi soldier have a clumsy fist fight on the slate roof top and somebody falls to his death. Not even THAT scene is well handled. The decision is made by the Gestapo to remove all the residents and blow up the Old Quarter with dynamite. How can Boyd, Wright, and the blond escape? DO they escape when the buildings start to blow? Guess.That's narrative thread Number One, and it's neither exciting nor suspenseful. There's a lot of banter and flirting. An air of pointlessness seems to hang over the story of Boyd and Buddies. Why don't they get on with it? Narrative threat Number Two occupies much less screen time but is far more interesting, a kind of horror story embedded in this otherwise dull production. An elderly Jewish dentist is marooned in Marseilles. He roots around and finds an entrepreneur, James Robertson Justice, who promises to see that he reaches a free country, and there will be no charge for the service. But the dentist must convert all his currency (quite a lot, actually) into gold and bring it with him for safe keeping.The old dentist does as he's told and shows up at the appointed time with a bag full of savings in Justice's apartment. All along, Justice has been brusque but now he offers his guest a glass of cognac in celebration of the occasion. Finally relaxed, the dentist asks conversationally what Justice does for a living. Fregonese's camera dollies in to make sure we realize how important this revelation is when Justice replies, "I am a murderer." Justice then explains that, having drunk the wine, the old Jew is expiring even now. He's the 96th victim. He'll be buried in the cellar in a pit of lime and will be forgotten shortly, while Justice will keep the gold and be eight thousand pounds richer. With an evil grin, Justice asks if he might hasten the dentist's inevitable demise and offers him more of the poisoned wine. A chilling scene.But the two narrative threads hardly touch one another. Boyd and troupe do the expected -- barely -- while Justice dies without adumbration in a stupid car accident.A lot of people seem to have enjoyed this rambling tale with its slight point, so you might want to give it a try.

What a pleasant find this movie was in a 10-movie set, called British War Cinema. It's not a combat film, nor an espionage or resistance film. At its core, it's a film about the hiding and freeing of two escaped British soldiers who wind up in Marseilles in 1943. Around that core story are four or five more stories, and the writers and director weave these nicely into a taught film with intrigue, betrayal, evil and romance. I won't divulge the plot here, but say that it includes French underground people and others who risk their lives to help people fleeing the Nazis. It also shows the dark side of those who took advantage of the plight of war. The romance is one of the more believable ones I've seen in war movies. And, this film shows something of the life in the seedy area of the Old Port, under Nazi control. The directing, acting, cinematography and music are all excellent. The destruction of the Old Port is shown with very good film footage from some source. I'm not aware of any other film that covered this war-time incident. The movie is based on a novel by Rupert Croft-Cooke. I didn't read the book and don't know if it's still available anywhere. So, I don't know how much the movie follows the book. But, based on the incidents in the film, the movie comes very close to some things that actually happened during that time. It thus has some historical value as well.The film opens in the Old Port area of Marseilles in 1943. The so-called Battle of Marseilles, or Marseilles Roundup in the Old Port took place on January 22 – 24, 1943. It was under the Vichy government at the time, and more than 12,000 French police were involved with the Nazis. We see very few policemen in this film – could it be because of sensitivities in 1957 when this movie came out? Surely, there would have been many thousands of people living in France then who had collaborated with Nazi Germany but were never prosecuted for it. Anyway, the roundup that took place was to arrest Jews. It resulted in more than 2,000 people being sent to death camps. The Old Port neighborhood was also considered a terrorist nest and seedy area, as depicted in the film. So, after the roundup, the authorities razed the entire Old Port, displacing some 30,000 people. The author and/or screenwriters added the character of Dr. Martout to the events in Marseilles, based on a real-life person who "operated" in and near Paris before and during the war. Dr. Marcel Petiot (1897- 1946), known as the "Butcher of Paris," was executed in 1946 for the killing of 26 people. He was suspected to have murdered more than 60 people. He supposedly had an escape underground operation for those fleeing the Nazis. In reality, it ended in the death of those who put their trust in him, as shown in the film. "Seven Thunders," had a more apt title, I think, with its first release in England – "The Beasts of Marseilles." I highly recommend this film for any war film aficionados and for any historical film library.

It's 1943, and the Germans are in control of the French port of Marseilles. Although the Nazis seem to be having plenty of fun at the local bordellos, they're upset by the amount of crime in the poor part of town, and suspicious that anti-Nazi plots are hatching there. They're absolutely right. At the beginning of the film, we meet two British soldiers who escaped from a POW camp, and are hunkering down in a tiny apartment, waiting for a chance to sail to England. But they can't possibly obey orders and stay in that apartment, so they venture out, and through them we gradually meet the rest of the people in the building and the local area. There's the charming girl next door who's also a petty thief (Anna Gaylor, looking a lot like a young Jessica Lange), an ex-pat Cockney lady with a knack for self-preservation (Kathleen Harrison), a fat and vicious Nazi with an eye for the ladies, and a sinister gentleman named Dr. Martout (James Robertson Justice) who claims to be helping refugees flee the country, but may in fact be in a completely different line of work.The script skillfully weaves all these story lines together, and keeps the tension turned up throughout. Although the opening credits label this "A British FILM" shot at Pinewood, much of it is shot on location, so the city of Marseilles plays a key role. Why is this fine- looking film, with a very competent cast and arresting visuals, so little known? This is an excellent, off-beat addition to the canon of WW2 movies.