Voyage of the Damned Movie Review

This extremely sad film is based on one of the most disgraceful episodes of World War II. In 1939, the S.S. St. Louis, a ship full of Jewish refugees, left Germany for asylum in Cuba. When they reached their destination, they were not allowed to disembark. Refugee organizations tried to intercede on their behalf, but no country would permit them to land, including the United States. Many passengers, refusing to return to Germany, discussed mass suicide by jumping into the sea, before a compromise was reached in which they would sail to a European harbor and be assigned to refugee camps throughout the continent. Six hundred of the nine hundred passengers faced death in concentration camps and the three hundred who were spared owed their fate to the most arbitrary of bureaucratic decisions. Stuart Rosenberg's film, based on the novel by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, deals with the passage itself and the growing horror of the passengers as they come to realize that their journey is meant to be Germany's example to the world that no one really cared about the plight of Jewish refugees. It turned out to be a chillingly effective example, regretfully not fully understandable until long after the war was over. The top-billed Faye Dunaway gives her usual high-strung performance as Denise Kreisler, with the great Oskar Werner as her faithless husband Dr. Egon Kreisler and Max von Sydow handling the complex role of Captain Gustav Schroeder. But the heart of the tragedy is most eloquently conveyed by the doomed lovers Max Gunther and Anna Rosen. What starts out as an innocent shipboard romance transforms them both into anguished symbols of the passage. Given more time, they might have married and had a family or broken up and married others and had families. But there is no more time for the couple, sensitively played by Malcolm McDowell and Lynne Frederick. Also worth noting in the cast are Sam Wanamaker and Lee Grant as Carl and Lili, Anna's parents, and a haunted and rather gaunt Jonathan Pryce in his first theatrical feature as Joseph Manasse. Katharine Ross plays a smallish role as a beautiful courtesan who tries to buy freedom for her parents (Nehemiah Persoff and Maria Schell are the improbably cast pair.)

1976 (G) 155m/C GB Faye Dunaway, Max von Sydow, Oskar Werner, Malcolm McDowell, Orson Welles, James Mason, Lee Grant, Katharine Ross, Ben Gazzara, Lynne Frederick, Wendy Hiller, Jose Ferrer, Luther Adler, Sam Wanamaker, Denholm Elliott, Nehemiah Persoff, Julie Harris, Maria Schell, Jonathan Pryce, Janet Suzman, Helmut Griem, Michael Constantine, Victor Spinetti; D: Stuart Rosenberg; W: Steve Shagan, David Butler; C: Billy Williams; M: Lalo Schifrin. Golden Globe Awards ‘77: Best Supporting Actress (Ross); Nominations: Academy Awards ‘76: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (Grant), Best Original Score. VHS