Ship of Fools
SHIP OF FOOLS (12)
D: Stanley Kramer
Columbia (Stanley Kramer)
US 1965
148 mins
Drama
W: Abby Mann [based on the novel by Katherine Anne
Porter]
DP: Ernest Laszlo
Ed: Robert C. Jones
Mus: Ernest Gold
PD: Robert Clatworthy
Cos: Bill Thomas & Jean Louis
Vivien Leigh (Mary Treadwell), Simone
Signoret (La Condesa), Jose Ferrer (Rieber), Lee Marvin (Tenny), Oskar Werner (Dr. Schumann), Elizabeth Ashley (Jenny), George Segal (David), Michael
Dunn (Glocken)
A
melodramatic soap opera set at sea, where a ship sailing from Mexico to Germany in 1933 has a rich complement of characters, each with their own story, status and prejudices.
There's a few stories which director Stanley Kramer has to
keep afloat, and though the source material would probably work better as a book, this adaptation is probably as good as what could have been made at the time, without the use of clichéd
narration.
The ship's company sees a German, a Jew, a coquette heiress,
an expatriate countess, a terminally ill doctor, a racist cowboy, a passionless newlywed couple, a dwarf, a prostitute and a large horde of Cuban peasants, all with their own story which unfolds
during the voyage.
The film tackles a lot of subjects, with just as many
metaphors, the chief one being the rise of fascism in the prelude to the Second World War.
7/10
