SYNOPSICS
Voyage of the Damned (1976) is a English movie. Stuart Rosenberg has directed this movie. Faye Dunaway,Oskar Werner,Lee Grant,Sam Wanamaker are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1976. Voyage of the Damned (1976) is considered one of the best Drama,War movie in India and around the world.
In 1939, Germany's Hamburg-America Line announced a voyage from Germany to Cuba. 937 people, the vast majority being Jews, signed up for the opportunity to escape Nazi Germany. Unbeknownst to the passengers, the visas they purchased were from a corrupt Cuban director of immigration, and they were invalid. Upon arrival in Havana, only 28 people were allowed to disembark, while the rest remained on board for weeks as they sailed to Florida, and eventually Canada, searching for safe haven. Sadly the ship returned to Antwerp after more than a month at sea. Forced back under Nazi rule as the low countries fell, it is estimated that approximately 250 of the refugees died in the extermination camps in occupied Poland.
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Voyage of the Damned (1976) Reviews
Voyage of the Damned: Powerful story that's light on entertainment
Voyage of the Damned tells the true story of the ill fated ship the S.S St.Louis. For those unaware it was a German ship loaded with over 900 passengers, most of them being Jews. The whole thing was essentially propaganda and (No spoilers here) but there was a lot the Nazi party were not telling all those involved. To my knowledge the movie is fairly accurate and is not exactly easy watching. The whole thing is very sad made doubly hard hitting by the fact it's all real and merely scratches the surface of the atrocities that took place. With an all star cast including Faye Dunaway, Max VonSydow and Malcolm McDowell it stands at around two and a half hours but struggles to stay entertaining. Though the story is certainly an interesting one it just doesn't translate very well into a movie. The story drags, is very bleak and as mentioned doesn't make for the easiest watching. I guess you could say it's a cross between Titanic (1997) and Schindlers List (1993) in that regard. I see the appeal and respect everything they've done, but Voyage of the Damned is a better historic/education piece than movie. The Good: Great cast Powerful story The Bad: Some poor accents Simply light on enjoyment Things I Learnt From This Movie: It's 2018, and people seem to have forgotten that Nazis are bad The Jewish people were under no illusion what the Nazis religious beliefs were.
Ship Of Foolish
The cast was a magnet, imagine, Faye Dunaway, Orson Welles, Malcolm McDowell, James Mason, Oskar Werner, Max Von Sydow, Wendy Hiller, Lee Grant, Maria Schell, Katherine Ross and I could go on. The splendor of the cast can't manage to disguise the poverty of the script. A huge subject tackled in Stanley Kramer's Ship Of Fool and that film also had an extraordinary cast: Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, Lee Marvin, Jose Ferrer and even Oskar Werner who, strangely, was in both films. However, Stanley Kramer had a great script by Abby Mann (Judgment At Nuremberg) and some of the scenes are spectacular. Here in this Voyage nothing is piercing or memorable just a succession of cardboard TV style scenes. But, if you're into star gazing this voyage could give you enough stasfictions to feel you haven't wasted a full afternoon.
As overloaded with star cameos as "Ship of Fools" and twice as inflated...
There is such a thing as too much of a good thing--but nobody seemed to realize this when overloading the ship with star names and then giving them little to do. Although based on a true incident, VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED gives the subject a sprawling Hollywood treatment and does what "Ship of Fools" did to Katherine Anne Porter's intriguing novel. At least MAX VON SYDOW gets to be dynamic as the captain and has the appropriate amount of star footage, but others--like JAMES MASON, JULIE HARRIS and WENDY HILLER--are gone before they can do much. However, the film's chief fault is the running time--well over two hours without ever building up the tension when the fate of the passengers should be pumping up audience interest in the outcome. The story takes a dramatic turn when the Jewish passengers are denied entry into Cuba and must return to their homeland unless the captain can come up with a better plan. FAYE DUNAWAY makes a stunning impression and LEE GRANT got an Oscar nomination for her strong supporting role, but others in the large cast come and go in an indifferent manner--except for OSKAR WERNER, who seems to be doing a repeat of his role in "Ship of Fools" as the ship's doctor and is as earnest as ever. Too bad the storyline couldn't have been trimmed to give the film a tighter length. As it is, it just seems to make its point of man's inhumanity to man without subtlety. Just misses being a more significant film.
Title tells all; occasionally interesting and compassionate
Nazi atrocities hang over the heads of some 937 Jewish refugees who are allowed to board the S.S. St. Louis in Hamburg, Germany, bound for Havana in 1939, but corrupt Cuban dignitaries (and apathetic other countries) manage to find unjust legalities which prevent the ocean-liner from docking. Dramatized true account with a star-studded cast filling the roles of the passengers (professors, lawyers, teachers, one rabbi, a Nazi spy, at least two children, a Christian ship's captain, and Faye Dunaway, looking wonderfully turned-out as the wife of a frustrated doctor). With anti-Semitism making a wave through Havana, nobody there is anxious to take on the Jews (they are looked on as charity cases), but the personalities in these excursions are static at best, with Ben Gazzara playing a globe-trotting businessman attempting to bargain on behalf of the voyagers (he seems to come from a different film altogether). Produced (or, one may say, packaged) by '70s tycoon Sir Lew Grade, the proceedings verge on the edge of disaster-movie clichés (with the appearance and the pacing of a television mini-series). The material warrants attention, but the melodrama inherent in the situation continually falters--gummed up with ungainly issues, overdrawn hysteria (Sam Wanamaker's suicide attempt), flagrant sentiment (Katharine Ross' Havana prostitute), and thuggish violence (it's bad enough that the two male teachers--scrawny and with their heads shaved--have been through hell, this narrative gives them more of the same, which is about as entertaining as watching victims at a firing squad). Dunaway, coolly regal and ice-pack gorgeous, approaches her part like visiting royalty, and gives the film a little goose. **1/2 from ****
A Voyage Worth Taking
This film details a very dark chapter in U.S. (in fact, World) history. As a propaganda tactic, to attempt to dismiss the notion that they were committing genocide, WWII Germany fills a cruise ship with Jewish citizens and sends them off to Cuba, purportedly so that they can be free. Unfortunately, Cuba will not allow the passengers to disembark, nor will the United States and so the ship must turn back, thus becoming the voyage of the damned. The cast is jam packed with stars of the day and most of them are great. Among the standouts are Von Sydow as the Captain--a pawn in the political game, McDowell as a sympathetic crewman, Dunaway as an aloof, glamorous German married to a Jew (Werner), Wanamaker as a desperate, concerned victim of circumstance and Ross (in one of her most heartfelt roles) as the daughter of two of the passengers. Most notable are Pryce & Koslo, unforgettably vulnerable as concentration camp escapees and Grant as the emotionally stunned wife of Wanamaker. Dunaway and Oscar-nominated Grant share the film's most memorable scene as Grant becomes unhinged by the events around her. The film has a sense of cruelty and dread, even if one is not aware of the outcome, and it can be painful to behold, but this is a story that needs to be told and the drama is, at times, quite compelling. Certainly the cast of familiar faces makes it easy to take. Bloated, cue-card-reading Welles is one drawback, but fortunately, he is not on screen long.