1965 – Ship of Fools

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Ship of Fools – 1965

This was a very well put together slice-of-life film.  As such, there wasn’t much real plot, but there were a cast of characters, each of whom had his or her own interesting story to tell.  The film had a few stars with big enough names, the biggest being Vivian Leigh, who turned in an exceptional performance.  But other actors like Jose Ferrer, Lee Marvin, Simone Signoret, and Oskar Werner showed some equally praiseworthy talents.

The premise of the movie was about a group of passengers on a German cruise ship as it sailed from Veracruz, Mexico to Bremerhaven Germany in 1933.  The main characters are all in first class, but the ship picks up 600 displaced workers in steerage who are being deported from Cuba to Spain, along with a woman who is being taken to a German prison.  Even the ship’s crew have their own stories, each of which are interesting in their own right.

I really liked the way each of the stories were told.  They weren’t lined up and displayed like animals in a zoo.  They were told all at the same time as the various characters interacted with each other.  This had the wonderful effect of making sure that no story really took dominance over any other, and I think the director, Stanley Kramer, did a fantastic job of giving each of them pretty equal screen time.

In her final screen appearance, Vivian Leigh played Mrs. Treadwell, a wealthy, bitter alcoholic who is on a mission to recapture her lost youth.  Lee Marvin played Bill Tenny, an ex-baseball player who is disappointed that his career never really took off.  David and Jenny are a young couple played by George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley.  They are very much in love with each other, but have very different views about what roles they should play in their relationship.  Michael Dunn plays Carl Glocken, a dwarf whose parents give him money to travel because they are embarrassed by him and want him to be away from them.  Heinz Ruhmann played Julius Lowenthall, a German, Jewish salesman who was a good man, though he seemed oblivious to the impending doom of the imminent rise of the Nazi party.

All the actors did a fine job and created some pretty unique personalities.  None of them were simple stereotypes.  They each had their good points and bad, making them realistic and believable.  Even Jose Ferrer, playing the part of Seigfried Reiber, did a great job, though he played the despicable character of a German businessman who was clearly a Nazi at heart.

But there was one story that caught my attention more than the others, not because the script favored them, but because the actors playing them did such an incredible job.  Werner played the ship’s doctor, Wilhelm Schumann, a man who is disillusioned with the banality of life and is searching for something to make him feel alive.  Signoret played La Condesa, a drug addict who is being transported to a German prison.  The two meet and a wonderful romance begins.  Their stories, as they intertwined, were beautiful and tragic.  They were dramatic without being schmaltzy, and the two actors turned in some extremely powerful performances.

But there were two things about the film that I didn’t care for.  One was the music.  The score didn’t always seem to fit the movie.  It was like it was trying too hard to be dramatic, and it just made it seem unnecessarily jarring and incongruous.  At times, the music seemed like it belonged in an action film or a suspense thriller.  But this was a drama.  The loud, and in-your-face orchestra hits as the passengers were departing the ship at the end made no sense, and took me out of the moment.

The other thing was the fact that twice in the film, the fourth wall was broken.  Once at the beginning and once at the end, the character of Glocken turned to the camera and spoke directly to the audience, saying inane things that explained that everyone in life is a fool in his own way.  Watch the movie and maybe you’ll see yourself.  It felt awkward and separated me from the drama.

But all-in-all, I would say that I liked the movie.  The drama was deep and insightful into the human condition.  The actors all did a superb job and I actually did see myself in more than one of the characters.  Good job everybody!

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