an ambitious but ultimately ineffective debut endeavor.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

It's 1939 Germany right before the war. The Nazis have sent the MS St. Louis off to carry 937 Jewish refugees to Cuba as propaganda. The passengers range from the rich, to the poor, and the fearful prosecuted. The ship itself and its services are luxurious. Captain Schroeder (Max von Sydow) is not a party member and works to help the passengers. Nazi operative Otto Schiendick is inserted into the crew and ferments dissent. Upon arrival in Cuba, only 28 are allowed to disembark while the others' visas are invalidated retroactively. Schroeder tries to find sanctuary in America and Canada to no avail, and is forced to return to Europe.The cast is stuffed and overloaded with class A actors. The movie is trying to follow too many people. It leaves the intensity low and the story scattered. It moves too slowly and is too long. It's a great historical epic of human failings. It's too bad that the movie isn't better. The subject matter deserves it.

Based on a true incident Voyage Of The Damned is the story of a select group of Jews picked from concentration camps that had not yet turned into slaughterhouses and allowed to depart Germany to Cuba where ostensibly they will stay and try to later immigrate to the USA. The problem is that they will never be allowed to land in Havana, it's all just a propaganda ploy to show how other nations don't want these people because they are insidious troublemakers by nature and the Nazis can then justify anything they do to them.Hitler was not a fool on this, he knew well the American system of immigration with its quotas and percentages and the way it was put in place as a backlash against foreigners in the Twenties. To its everlasting shame the USA put this into affect the result being millions of people dying. This from a country whose greatest strength was its immigrant population uncounted millions in this country enjoy its benefits because our ancestors came here from a variety of places for refuge and for opportunity.So these people filled with hopes and dreams take passage in the hopes of avoiding the slaughter to come. What happens to them collectively and individually is the story of Voyage Of The Damned.The Germans are not shown as stereotypes either which is a major strength this film has. They range from a humane captain who is Max Von Sydow to Malcolm McDowell as his personal orderly who is marked for tragedy when he falls for the daughter of one of the refugee families and starts seeing things in a new light to Helmut Griem who is the official Nazi party representative on the ship and who challenges successfully Von Sydow's authority as captain.Our laws being what they were and with isolationist sentiment as it was in May of 1939 a case could be made for not officially granting the ship landing clearance. We see our own Coast Guard cutter warning the German ship not to land or even enter our territorial waters. A few winks and nods and they could have. Or some pressure could be brought to bare on the Cuban government which in fact was our client state which never happened. The Cubans like Jose Ferrer and Orson Welles and Fernando Rey are shown to be eminently corruptible. One played by James Mason is most assuredly not and he intervenes in one very poignant case involving some children on the boat being reunited with their father.The refugees much like the smaller unit that inhabited that attic where Anne Frank's refugee extended family took place are a wide cross section of Jewish Germany. One, Lee Grant was given an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but it seems not fair to have just singled her out. Oskar Werner, Faye Dunaway, Sam Wanamaker, Wendy Hiller, and Luther Adler are all equally memorable. And Ben Gazzara has the most straightforward role as a representative of the American Jewish Committee in the film. He functions like Richard Widmark the prosecutor in Judgment At Nuremberg, the voice of conscience as he tries to raise money to essentially buy officials in the Cuban government. Voyage Of The Damned has worn well over time and it's something to be seen and seen again. And it's quite a condemnation of our Twenties immigration laws still largely in effect. Funny in the 19th century there was never an issue over illegal aliens, we took whatever we got. Maybe we can't return to the days of my grandparents coming here, but we have to do better than we have.

This is a really remarkable film of great importance. It concerns the voyage of an ocean liner from Hamburg in Germany to Cuba, loaded with Jews who have bought their way out of the Nazi nightmare by paying money to Heinrich Himmler. The voyage across the Atlantic is long and slow, with much drama taking place on the way. But when the ship reaches Cuba, the Jews are not allowed to disembark after all, and the whole voyage turns out to have been a 'set-up', a cover for a military cargo arrangement. The film has an all-star cast of prominent film actors of the 1970s. There are so many of them it almost seems as if the whole of Hollywood tried to squeeze into the cast list. The stars include Faye Dunaway, Orson Welles, James Mason, Max von Sydow as the ship's captain, Jose Ferrer, Julie Harris, Oscar Werner in his last film, Maria Schell, Wendy Hiller (who is marvellous, as always), Sam Wanamaker, Ben Gazzara, and the list goes on. Some of these stars appear only fleetingly, between decks as it were, and others have real parts. Some like Orson Welles and Fernando Rey are even on land, and not at sea at all. (After all various diplomats in capital cities have to be seen debating whether to save the Jews or not, or the story would have no context.) Some of the younger stars of the day such as Katharine Ross, Lynne Frederick, and Malcolm McDowell are now largely forgotten as 'names', but were 'big' then. In his first feature film role, Jonathan Pryce is spectacular. Supporting actors like Lee Grant, Victor Spinetti and Luther Adler were familiar then but few now remember them at all, despite the many roles they played on countless occasions, so that everyone at least knew their faces. The film was directed by Stuart Rosenberg and was based on a best-selling novel, which in turn was based upon the notorious real events which actually happened and were an international scandal. The name of the ship was the S.S. St. Louis, and there were 937 Jewish passengers aboard. I cannot reveal the ending of the film or the fate of these passengers, but the historical remarks under 'Trivia' in the IMDb entry add information which partially corrects details of the facts as portrayed in the film.

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.