Maurice Tourneur was one of the most sophisticated directors in Hollywood, where he made some 60 films before returning to France in 1927. In the late teens and early Twenties, he was considered a peer of D.W. Griffith; he continued to make films right through the Forties. His later films - all too little known - draw on the marvelous sense of pictorialism which he developed during the silent era (and which he passed on to his son Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, Out of the Past)).
Justin de Marseille is a film policier much more characteristic of its director's flair for eloquence than of the hard-hitting American gangster films by which it is, at least in part, inspired. William K. Everson comments: “Although he uses outdoor locations when he must, especially in the street chase scenes, most of (Tourneur's) narrative takes place in Meerson's stylized sets. There are some quite lovely exterior scenes...(that) look like paintings rather than photographs. (Compare his use of Marseille as a background for crime with its much harsher use in the contemporary French Connection II.) Even much of the thrill material is played for pictorialism rather than suspense.... In fact, despite the pimps and the bordellos, the drug traffic and the various killings, it is not a grim film.... Most of the characters are weak rather than evil, and all of them are rather colorful and jolly. The law is tolerant, and there is no censor-proof moral atonement or punishment at the end.... The film clearly assumes knowledge of the Hollywood crime film...and most of the characters are familiar to us: the faithful friend who is finally killed; the part-time mistress who loves but is not loved by the crime boss; his worried but spunky mother; the young innocent that he befriends....”