This rather endless film with an ensemble cast tells the story of a boatload of Jewish people sent to the Americas by Germany. Because of a lack of credentials, they were unable to disembark in any of the countries, including the U.S. Of course, anti-Semitism was alive and well in the States. Nazi Germany did not have a corner on the market. We have the individual stories of a number of individual passengers. It was not long before the Captain of the ship realized they were not going to be allowed into any country. As the news trickled down, we got to see the angst and fear in these passengers. This is based on real events in 1937 and the truth of the matter is that the large majority of these people were slaughtered when they returned to their home country. The problem for me is that the movie is quite dull and way too long.

Goodish, and well-intentioned, but not great. Based on a true story, this should be a gut-wrenching emotional roller-coaster ride. The movie feels cold, empty and sterile, despite its subject matter. While we are given glimpses of the despicableness of the Nazi regime, the movie pulls its punches. In place of genuine emotion, we have overwrought sub-plots, and an excess of sub-plots. This makes the movie overly long, without really adding to the drama. Some of the acting is in line with this overwroughtness, being over-acted, almost camp.Not all the performances are so bad, though. Max von Sydow is excellent as the captain. Minor roles include a host of big names: Orson Welles, James Mason, Denholm Elliott, Katharine Ross, Jose Ferrer, Ben Gazzara.Worth watching as a reminder of a dark period in human history, and the lengths of human bigotry.

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.

In 1974 the movie " Voyage of the Damned " a book written by Gordon Thomas and Max Witts became the inspiration for the film directed by Stuart Rosenberg. Within it's dramatic pages, lies the true story of the MS St. Louis and it's infamous cargo of nearly 1000 Jewish Passengers. The all star cast which includes Max Von Sydow as Capt. Schroeder, Malcolm McDowell, James Mason, Nehemiah Persoff, Orson Wells, Jose Ferrer, Fernando Rey and Ben Gazzara make this film a must see movie. For the Germans of World War II, this incident was a Propaganda event designed to illustrate to the world, that not even the United States did not want to Jews. Instead, the moving film touches the heart of any viewer sufficiently up on their history of the murderous reign of the Nazis. The end result of the all-star-cast and its touching script is the creation of a Cinematic Classic. Hailed as such, one cannot feel the desperation and longing of the passengers to find peace in a world so full of men anxious to ignore the plea of their fellow humans. Easilly recommended. ****