THE BOAT IS FULL Movie Review

Das Boot 1st Voll

One of the least known (in the U.S.) films on the subject of the Holocaust is also one of the finest. The Boat Is Full is Swiss director Markus Imhoof's moving and detailed depiction of a group of German Jewish refugees who pose as a family in order to reach asylum in Switzerland, only to find that strictly maintained quotas are causing many to be turned back from this supposed haven of neutrality, resulting in certain death. “The boat is full” was, in fact, the Swiss Parliament's unofficial term for having accepted all the Jews they were going to take, and in this they joined many other nations of the world (including the U.S.) in officially denouncing the German policy of extermination, then looking the other way when refugees pounded on the door. Imhoof, who was born at about the time this story takes place, has said that he always wondered about Swiss policy on this subject, especially since his uncle—living in America during the war—had financed the smuggling of some Jews from Switzerland to the U.S. This austere and appropriately claustrophobic work—featuring not a note of music—was rather surprisingly financed as a Swiss/Austrian/West German co-production; it won prizes for Best Direction and Best Screenplay at the Berlin Film Festival.

NEXT STOP … The Sorrow and the Pity, Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie, Shoah

1981 104m/C SI Tina Engel, Curt Bois, Renate Steiger, Mathias Gnaedinger, Hans Diehl, Martin Walz, Gerd David; D: Markus Imhoof; W: Markus Imhoof; C: Hans Liechti. Berlin International Film Festival ‘81: Best Director (Imhoof); Nominations: Academy Awards ‘81: Best Foreign Film. VHS FRF, GLV, SWC