Ship of Fools (B&W) [VHS]
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VHS Movie Reviews of Ship of Fools (B&W) [VHS]
Movie Review: Sail away with an all-star cast
Summary: 5 Stars
The "Ship of Fools" is a German luxury liner sailing home from Mexico in 1933. Aboard are a classic roster of characters - the ship's noble doctor (Oskar Werner) who falls in love with the drug-addicted activist (Simone Signoret), the troubled young lovers (Elizabeth Ashley and George Segal), the over-the-hill grande dame (Vivian Leigh), the washed-up ball player (Lee Marvin), the pro-Furher German (Jose Ferrer), etc. The camera floats leisurely from group to group as they interact on the month-long cruise.
The most memorable character is the sensitive Dr. Schumann, who alone sees the foolishness of the passengers and the futility of his own life. Werner gives a wonderfully touching performance and the movie is best when he is on screen. Signoret is also very good as a contessa who is being taken to prison. Leigh and Ferrer are both over-the-top, playing a stereotypical drunken divorce and anti-Semite, respectively.
When this movie was made (1965), the story and characters were not as cliché as they are now. It's dated and predictable now; the ladies' costumes aren't right for the time, and it's soap opera all the way. Still, I enjoyed it and recommend it as fun and entertaining, and a good chance to see a lot of well-known actors in one place. "Ship of Fools" was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and acting awards for Werner and Signoret.
Kona
Movie Review: Ship of Fools
Summary: 5 Stars
Based on Katherin Anne Porter's novel, producer/director Stanley Kramer creates a fascinating, emotionally gripping film with a conscience, "Ship" stays afloat thanks to Abby Mann's sharp screenplay and a slew of memorable performances: Signoret as a Spanish activist, Oskar Werner as the onboard doctor, and Oscar-nominated dwarf Michael Dunn, whose direct-address speeches are worthy of Sophocles. And then, there's the incomparable Lee Marvin, riveting as always.Movie Review: A must watch classic
Summary: 5 Stars
Ship of Fools is a cruise-board drama filmed in 1965, but set in 1933. It follows a group of voyagers heading from Mexico via Cuba to Bremerhaven, Germany.
The story involves people from different parts of society - the older Germans that are pro-Nazi, the Jewish salesman, the young idealist painter, the childless couple with a dog that they treat as a child. The ship's doctor falls in love with the socialite who took a stand against poverty.
The movie is in black and white, and won many awards for its set direction and art direction. It also got nominations for many of its actors. The cast features many well known faces - Jose Ferrer, Lee Marvin, Vivian Leigh, and many more.
The movie is very explicitly a social commentary, with differences shown not only between the first class passengers and the Spanish workers down in the hold, but also between different members in first class. There are women forced in prostitution, fathers yelling at kids, women seeking affairs, men contemplating leaving their wives. There is a lot of the traditional "if only they knew" kind of situation, with people thinking the Nazis would never take power - when of course the audience well knows that they do.
It's a fascinating look at the type of cruises offered in the first half of the 20th century - when there was almost always an Upper Class going for luxury and a Lower Class just trying to get to the destination in a cheap manner.
Highly recommended!
Movie Review: Shipboard Microcosm Ignited by Werner and Signoret
Summary: 4 Stars
An ocean liner in a movie usually signals some impending disaster as our cinematic sensibilities have become accustomed to special-effects-laden epics like "The Poseidon Adventure" and "Titanic". That's what probably makes director Stanley Kramer's 1965 "Ship of Fools" look all the more old-fashioned with its omnibus international cast and heavy emphasis on dialogue, and neither an iceberg nor a tidal wave to be seen within its lengthy 149-minute running time. In fact, the whole point of the film is to show a diverse group of people share a 1933 voyage between Veracruz and Bremerhaven in the midst of the rise of the Third Reich in Germany. Consequently the film focuses on messages of political intolerance, anti-Semitism, racism and class distinctions. It all sounds heavy, which fits snugly into Kramer's oeuvre, but actually what still resonates after forty years is a literate script by the estimable Abby Mann and the presence of well-cast actors, some quite exceptional in their roles.
Vivien Leigh is the nominal star, but she doesn't dominate the story. Looking gaunt and acting especially brittle, she gives age-fearing Mary Treadwell a Tennessee Williams makeover complete with a scene of desperate drunkenness beginning with an impromptu Charleston and ending with a merciless beating of Lee Marvin's even more drunken character with her shoe. Leigh's work was so infrequent at the time that this sadly became her last film. Marvin effectively plays Bill Tenny, an obnoxious Texan reliving his baseball glory days and lumbering around the ship looking for women. His best scene is in an empty dining room with Carl Glocken, embodied by the superb Michael Dunn, the story's narrator and an erudite man who happens to be a dwarf (a "sawed-off intellectual" according to Tenny). José Ferrer portrays an abrasive anti-Semitic publisher with his typical stentorian fervor, who ironically has to share a cabin with Jewish salesman Julius Lowenthal, played with contrasting gentility by Heinz Rühmann. Their scenes are rather comical until they come to bond, and Lowenthal spouts his Pollyanna view of the fate of the Jews in Germany. A very young and brooding George Segal and an ingenuous Elizabeth Ashley play David and Jenny, lovers conflicted about their differing priorities.
But best of all are the mature illicit lovers, Oskar Werner as Schumann, the married, ailing ship's doctor and Simone Signoret as La Condesa, the drug-addicted woman en route to a Cuban prison for her role in leading Mexicans to a social uprising. Their scenes together elevate the film into something quite remarkable as their relationship moves from hesitant, almost light-hearted seduction to deep-seeded love, all performed with emotional economy that makes their inevitable parting even more painful to watch. Werner bares Schumann's soul with precision until his final breath, and Signoret combines her unique blend of world-weariness and subtle coquettishness into a morally ambiguous yet magnetic character. Kramer paces the film well, and he also has some nice cinematic shots, like the sight of hundreds of Cuban refugees awaiting the ship to dock, but the constant use of fake backdrops lends an unwelcome staginess to the proceedings. All in all, this is a worthwhile journey to take, in particular, to see Werner and Signoret at their zenith.
Movie Review: This ain't no "Love Boat"
Summary: 5 Stars
And now a word about the strengths of this classic film, amidst all the grousing about the weaknesses of its direction and the DVD not containing a full screen version. Ahem.
"Ship of Fools" is listed on the NY Times' "1000 best films of all time," and for good reason. As someone who was a child when this film was released, and only now getting around to seeing it for myself, there are a great number of excellent things to enjoy about this truly great movie, many of them centering on the portrayals of the many vivid characters. Vivien Leigh is riveting as the embittered middle-aged wealthy divorcee who lies about her age, only for the sake of her own vanity. Oskar Werner, an actor little known to me, plays the ship's doctor with brilliant understatement until he comes unraveled toward the end of the story. He and Simone Signoret, who play illicit lovers, were nominated for Best Actor and Actress Oscars. And it's great fun to see unexpectedly terrific work by a couple of actors I mainly knew from TV series (Michael Dunn, the dwarf, nominated here for a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar, who played Miguelito Loveless on TV's "The Wild, Wild West" and Werner Klemper, famous for Colonel Klink of "Hogan's Heroes").
The story itself is quite ironic and worth savoring as well. The titular ship is a cruise ship from Germany, and while there is romance and sex on board as one might expect (perhaps more so than one might expect from a film of this era), the main course is political. Jose Ferrer as a top Nazi writer, George Segal as a Communist/Socialist artist, and Heinz Ruhmann as a capitalist German Jew who still laments the Kaiser's passing and believes the Nazis are a passing fad ("There are over six million Jews in Germany. What're they going to do, kill all of us?").
I'd like to ultimately give the film 4-1/2 stars, as somehow all of these wonderful parts don't add up to a completely wonderful whole, but close enough. Certainly there is a heavy-handedness and overplay to some of the film's moments, and at times it does come off as a dramatic, 1965 version of "The Love Boat" that takes place in late 1932 or early 1933. Ultimately, however, there are so many terrific performances and memorable story lines, which seem to neither drag on too long nor leave us hanging on for more. That balance is very difficult to achieve in a film with such a large cast, so ultimately this film certainly deserves its status as a classic. I didn't even mention other worthy work by Lee Marvin, Elizabeth Ashley, and others, but I certainly could.
And as for the "widescreen vs full screen" issue, the film is a character study that takes place entirely on a ship. The full screen is enough to hold that, although I agree I would like to see it in widescreen if/when available. It's not a film where the trimming is distracting, at least as far as I noticed, as it would be with something like "Lawrence of Arabia."