Task: Story Composition
Input (English): Fact1: ship 's doctor takes special interest in La Condesa, Fact2: countess from Cuba is being shipped to Spanish-run prison on Tenerife, Fact3: people in steerage be treated like human beings rather than animals, Fact4: Jewish Lowenthal is invited to join dwarf named Glocken for meals, Fact5: David is unhappy at lack of success with painting
Output (English): The characters board a German ocean liner in Veracruz, Mexico, for a voyage to Bremerhaven, Germany, along with 600 displaced workers in steerage, being deported from Cuba back to Spain, and a notsoexotic band of entertainers, for whom the voyage is just a job. Some are happy to be bound for a rising Nazi Germany, some are apprehensive, while others appear oblivious to its potential dangers. The ships doctor, Schumann, takes a special interest in La Condesa, a countess from Cuba who has an addiction to drugs and is being shipped to a Spanishrun prison on Tenerife. Her sense of certain doom is contrasted by the doctors determination to fight the forces of oppression, embodied by his insistence that the people in steerage be treated like human beings rather than animals. The doctor himself has a secret, a terminal heart condition, and his sympathy for the countess soon evolves into love. Several passengers are invited to dine each night at the captains table. There, some are amused and others offended by the antiSemitic rants of a German businessman named Rieber who – although married – is beginning an onboard affair with Lizzi, a busty blonde. The Jewish Lowenthal is invited instead to join a dwarf named Glocken for his meals, and the two bond over their exclusion: the character Gloken sometimes speaks to the audience, more often at the beginning and the end of this film. Eventually a passenger named Freytag seems shocked to find himself ostracized when Rieber learns that his wife is Jewish. Others aboard include a young American couple, David and Jenny, who bicker because David is unhappy at his lack of success with painting. A divorcee, Mary Treadwell, drinks and flirts, on a quest to recapture her youth in Paris. Bill Tenny is a former baseball player disappointed in the way his career never quite took off. They are distracted by the music and the professional dancers, whose flirtations seem to skirt the edges of solicitation, or dive right in to the seedy side of oblivion. The ship stops in Spain where the displaced workers and La Condesa disembark. The doctor dies before the ship reaches Germany. Upon the arrival in Germany, everyone leaves the ship, but the Nazis have taken over. Addressing the audience, Gloken asks how important the appearance of the Nazis are to him and the others, to which he says the word Nothing.