Ship of Fools
Tags: romantic, suspenseful, storytelling

Plot synopsis:
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 not-so-exotic 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 ship's doctor, Schumann (Oskar Werner) (with dueling scar), takes a special interest in La Condesa (Simone Signoret), a countess from Cuba who has an addiction to drugs and is being shipped to a Spanish-run prison on Tenerife. Her sense of certain doom is contrasted by the doctor's 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 captain's table. There, some are amused and others offended by the anti-Semitic rants of a German businessman named Rieber (José Ferrer) who – although married – is beginning an on-board affair with a busty blonde (Christiane Schmidtmer). The Jewish Lowenthal (Heinz Rühmann) is invited instead to join a dwarf named Glocken (Michael Dunn) for his meals, and the two bond over their exclusion. Eventually a passenger named Freytag (Alf Kjellin) seems shocked to find himself ostracized when Rieber learns that his wife is Jewish.
Others aboard include a young American couple, David (George Segal) and Jenny (Elizabeth Ashley), who bicker because David is unhappy at his lack of success with painting. A divorcée, Mary Treadwell (Vivien Leigh), drinks and flirts, on a quest to recapture her youth in Paris. Bill Tenny (Lee Marvin) 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.
When the passengers disembark, two are no longer with them – the countess, who has been taken to an island prison, and the doctor, who has died.

Review: Jose Ferrer's German bore, George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley and even the wonderful Michael Dunn will make you sea sick at times but I will recommend it nonetheless just to admire and enjoy Vivien Leigh's Charleston or Simone Signoret looking at Oskar Werner with a mixture of love, lust, compassion and need.
"Ship of Fools" it may be, but it is also a Ship of Stars: Oskar Werner, Vivien Leigh, Lee Marvin, Simone Signoret, Jose Ferrer, Elizabeth Ashley, George Segal, and Michael Dunn.
Directed by Stanley Kramer, this 1965 film deals with a German ship heading to its port in Bremerhaven in 1933 and the lives of some of its passengers.
Dunn speaks to the audience at the beginning and end of the film, telling us at first that it is a ship of fools and that we may find ourselves in some of the characters.This is one of the best all-star casts ever assembled, right up there with "All About Eve" and "The Long, Hot Summer." The performances are as magnificent as the film is relentlessly depressing, with a Jewish man put at a table with a dwarf, while at the captain's table, another man preaches about the new Germany and extermination of Jews, the elderly, and those who are not fit.
By the end of the film, looking at the Jew's beautiful family on the dock, the viewer is ready to reach for a razor blade.Oskar Werner (Tyrone Power's son-in-law) gives a magnificent performance as a man discouraged about his life full of obligations, exhausted from ill health, and reaching out for one last chance at happiness.
One can keep going on, especially with the sympathetic Oscar Werner and Simone Signoret, and with Dunn again, the only one of the passengers and crew who is intelligent.For the point of the story is that this world of the 1930s is headed (as the reader knows) for disaster that will engulf everyone.
Director Kramer assembled an all-star cast--including Vivien Leigh (her last film), Simone Signoret, José Ferrer, Lee Marvin, Oskar Werner, José Greco, and George Segal.The film takes place entirely on shipboard, except for the final scene.
Based on Katherine Anne Porter's epic novel, the Oscar-nominated "Best Picture" centers on a sundry group of travelers circa 1933 who clash "Grand Hotel" style on a German ocean liner bound, via Mexico, for Germany (and impending doom it would seem) just as strong Nazi sentiment was breeding.
The ship becomes a microcosm of pre-WWII life and mores, with a plethora of subplots alternately swelling and ebbing throughout - situations that alter the course of some of its passengers and crew members, for better or worse.From the clever opening collage of credits (don't miss this part) set to a catchy, flavorful Latin score to its fascinating all-star disembarkation at the end, it's smooth sailing for most of this trip, guided with an assured hand by the always capable Stanley ("Judgment at Nuremberg") Kramer, with certain cast members (Simone Signoret, Oskar Werner, Vivien Leigh, Lee Marvin, Michael Dunn) coming off better than others (José Ferrer, Elizabeth Ashley, George Segal).A number of compelling vignettes acted out by the choice, eclectic ensemble make up for the sometimes turgid melodramatics that occur on board as our "ship of fools" are forced to examine their own pride and prejudice while victimized by others.
Who can forget the tormented Simone Signoret and Oskar Werner (both Oscar-nominated) as the morphine-addicted political prisoner and dutiful ship's physician who provide the film with its most poignant and tragic shipboard romance.
These glorious scenes and more help to balance out the less serviceable ones, particularly those involving Jose Ferrer's boisterous, irritating Nazi bigot who borders on caricature, and Elizabeth Ashley and George Segal's turbulent lovers who come off dull and forced.Ernest Laszlo's lustrous black-and-white cinematography was suitably Oscar awarded, while the whole look, feel and tone of the movie is decidedly old-style theatre at its best.
Both deserved."Ship Of Fools" (1965) also deserved (but did not get, sadly) multiple "Best Actor" and Best Actress" awards ["Best Supporting Actor/ Actress awards, also].High quality, in-depth acting of true talent and accomplishment have seldom ever reached the levels achieved in this movie, done repeatedly, again and again and again, from start to finish.The movie contained at least half a dozen (possibly more) Academy Award winner best actor performances.....at least three best actor academy award winners performed (incredibily) in this movie (Lee Marvin, Vivien Leigh, and Jose Ferrer), and others (some who may have gotten academy awards I overlooked) were also wonderful in all ways (Simone Signoret, Oscar Werner, Michael Dunn, Elizabeth Ashley, George Segal, Gila Golan, Jose Greco, and Barbara Luna....who sang the famous "Dites Moi" song in South Pacific on the Broadway stage when she was a little girl in 1949!).The titles at the start of movie are incredible, and deserve to be ranked with the best of all movie titles ever presented (someday, a special award for movie titles will be established....if this has not already been done, it is certainly an unmet need.....movie titles are important, are an art unto themselves, and a major asset to movies when done well.........see the titles for Bullitt 1968 and North By Northwest 1959 as only two examples of "the best of the best movie titles...the "Ship Of Fools" 1965 movie titles are part of the "the best of the best.") The Abby Mann written screenplay is really an original screenplay with an original story, by far better than the best selling Katherine Anne Porter novel also titled "Ship Of Fools" ....
Furthermore , the once famous but now a disappointed and despairing divorcée named Mary Treadwell (Vivien Leigh's last film , she replaced Katharine Hepburn who was first choice for the aging Southern belle, but because of Spencer Tracy's bad health she opted to continue to care for him), a punchy as well as forceful baseball player (Lee Marvin) and a wise dwarf (Michael Dunn) .
Special mention to the extraordinary couple acting as illicit lovers magnificently played by Simone Signoret and Oskar Werner who would make a similar film 11 years later ,¨Voyage of the damned¨ by Stuart Rosenberg , also was about a boatload of refugees heading back to Germany before the outbreak of the Second World War ; it would prove to be Werner's final film .
The hotchpotch of the first-class passengers (from Mexico to Europe) depicted in the film are complying with the milieu of that particular period, notably the 3 Oscar-nominated performance from Simone Signoret, Oskar Werner and Michael Dunn (the latter is a very interesting example of a nomination from a normally pedestrian presence, I hope the dwarf card is not the case here), and judging by my taste, Heinz Rühmann and Vivien Leigh are also quite in the top form, especially Ms. Leigh, not to mention her turbulent real life status at that time, her frail with dignity performance is rather too harrowing to watch.
(The two actors and the director must have worked on this together for a long time, otherwise none of them could have helped breaking up with laughter.) Dunn finally replies, "No." Marvin says slowly and emphatically, "I think you're a sawed off INTELLECTUAL." Then adds, "Drink up, shorty." That scene, with its improvised quality, its near-perfect timing and acting, its camera placement, should be shown in every film class.I don't want to leave out Oskar Werner who, along with Simone Signoret, provides the romance and the drama.
The story and acting reflect the style of a different time, but if taken on its own terms------this film can provide many enjoyable moments of screen entertainment."Ship of Fools" is another matter.
Its all-star cast delivers a series of widely varying performances-------from the scenery-chewing ones by Jose Ferrer and Lee Marvin to the world-weary portrayals by Oskar Werner and Simone Signoret to the acting school products of George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley.
"Ship of Fools" should be best remembered today as Vivien Leigh's last film----in a role that she knew quite well by then-----a variation of her Blanche DuBois character in "Streetcar Named Desire." Her Mrs. Treadwell is a monument to all the depleted middle-aged women in fiction who become shadows of what they once were, and who are constant reminders of what living an empty life ultimately produces.But she sure was a beautiful woman, even in her final screen appearance.
The first-class passengers are the lonely American Mary Treadwell (Vivien Leigh); the bigoted Siegfried Rieber (Jose Ferrer) that woos the futile Lizzi Spoekenkieker (Christiane Schmidtmer); the rude American player Bill Tenny (Lee Marvin); the aspiring painter David (George Segal) and his girlfriend Jenny (Elizabeth Ashley) that financially supports him; the gypsy dancer Pepe (Jose Greco) and his troupe of prostitutes posing of dancers; the dwarf Karl Glocken (Michael Dunn); the Jew Julius Lowenthal (Heinz Ruehmann); the German Freytag (Alf Kjellin) that was married to a Jewish woman; and a weird couple that treats their dog as a son.
There are dozens of characters and stories in the film and it would be silly to describe any of them in detail, but the emotional core of the film belongs to the ship doctor and a Spanish contessa, brilliantly played by Oskar Werner (who also gave a brilliant performance the same year in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold) and Simone Signoret.
Sounds like the Love Boat so far, but it's about 180 degrees the opposite of that.You can best compare Ship of Fools to Grand Hotel which was also in a German setting and set in the same time period that Grand Hotel came out, 1932.
Werner knows this on some level, but he gets involved anyway because he sees her as a last chance for life after the heart attack he sustained.Jose Ferrer is the bellicose Nazi prototype who can't seem to find much good in any other people save the Germans.
Greco by the way is outstanding in his role.Lee Marvin's breakthrough year turned out to be 1965 because Ship of Fools together with his Oscar performance in Cat Ballou established him as a leading man, not just a brilliant character actor.
It was a grand performance for Leigh.Ship of Fools got several Oscar nominations including Best Picture and acting nominations for Oskar Werner for Best Actor and Michael Dunn for Best Supporting Actor.
A strange, rather offbeat morality tale from Katherine Anne Porter's bulky novel, SHIP OF FOOLS manages to hold interest even though the characters are never fully realized and the full potential of the novel isn't to be found in the screenplay.It's best described as a multi-episode GRAND HOTEL at sea, episodic with the love story between Simone Signoret and Oskar Werner at the core and easily the best acted piece, despite the soap-opera overtones.
Director Stanley Kramer usually dealt with films of a social nature.Ship of Fools, based on Katherine Ann Porter's best seller, is such a film.It revolves about a group of passengers on their way to Bremerhaven, Germany in 1933, as the Nazis have seized power and started their brutal change in Germany.Willie, the ship doctor, is masterfully played by Oscar Werner, who merited a best actor nomination.
She skillfully reminded him that he has apparently been too busy lynching Negroes to know what is going on in the world.An excellent supporting cast of George Segal, Elizabeth Ashley, as well as the brilliant Jose Ferrer, in a brilliant turn as the Nazi, who advocated death for older people.Veteran German actor, Heinz Ruehman, asks: What are they going to do, kill us all?You've been a fool if you've missed this endearing picture so far.
The film includes a stellar cast, interesting theme, and while the characters are more like caricatures, I do not agree with several reviews condemning them as "archetypes".Simone Signoret is a drug addled countess, being deported, who ends up falling for the ship's physician, Oskar Werner.
(The dog itself is as amusing to look at as Jose Ferrer, dressed as a devil).Today, the film seems a bit talky, but has a definite message, and the performances by Vivien Leigh, Lee Marvin and Ferrer alone are worth watching.
Oddly enough it was the sugary sweet anti-Nazi R&H bonbon, The Sound of Music, that took the trophy that year, but then this was only a subplot in that opus.Granted it is a bit overdone, but the screenplay has its heart in the right place and we are enriched by the performances of Oskar Werner and Simone Signoret - justly Oscar nommed - as well as the last film performance of Vivien Leigh (who not only deserved a nom and didn't get it - she deserved to WIN the Best Supporting Actress trophy - a very sad and serious error).
The doomed love affair at the center of the drama seems tailor made to bore one to death -- other plot lines, like the one involving George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley, get short shrift by the screenwriters.There are three reasons to see "Ship of Fools": 1.) Michael Dunn, who gives a winsome and entirely winning performance as the diminutive narrator and speaks directly into the camera in a gimmick that shouldn't work but does 2.) Lee Marvin, giving a pleasingly unlikable performance as a belligerent American 3.) and Vivien Leigh, whose morose character at one point in the film breaks into a five-second spirited Charleston, which by itself makes the film worth sitting through.Grade: B.
This film has a first rate cast like the great Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, Oskar Werner, Lee Marvin, Elizabeth Ashley, George Segal, Michael Dunn, Jose Ferrer, and others to write about here.
"Ship of Fools" is a great film and always will be, because of great actors like: Vivien Leigh (Mary Treadwell) "Gone With the Wind" '39; Simone Signoret,(La Condesa)"Room At The Top"'59; Jose Ferrer (Siegfried Riebu) "Vovage of the Damned"'76 along with Oskar Werner (Willie Schumann)"Fahrenheit 451" '66.
The movie portrays various and sundry people aboard an ocean liner sailing from Mexico to Germany in 1933.At the start, dwarf Karl Glocken (Michael Dunn) tells the audience that the passengers are all fools, including him.
As the movie progresses, we get introduced to the numerous characters: a divorced socialite (Vivien Leigh in her final role), an alcoholic (Lee Marvin), a Spanish aristocrat (Simone Signoret), and a Nazi (Jose Ferrer).
The major reason to view this film is the outstanding final performance of the incomparable Vivien Leigh,who played Mrs. Mary Treadwell, an attractive, middle-aged, Southern divorcée on this cruise ship set in the 1930s.
But with Ship of Fools what works is that it's like changing the channels between about seven or eight channels with each one having different characters in the same time period, so if one channel starts to drag a little it can flip to another and it might be more interesting or compelling.The film doesn't have a strong story, which is both to its benefit and detriment.
Vivien Leigh is the (just slightly) older woman who was once probably to die for and now time has sort of passed her by from her jazz days; the Southern boozer (Marvin) who doesn't get why Jews are put down by the Germans but can't help but drop n****er a few times without even seeming to notice; Oskar Werner is a doctor who becomes a sort of friend to Simone Signoret (I say sort of since it unfolds into what may be a romance for him, and for her is more mysterious); and George Segal is an artist who can't seem to really make a living at that job since he works for money elsewhere, and Elizabeth Ashley as his flustered would-be lover.I may have neglected to mention some of the German characters, of which there are many, including a dwarf, one of the more interesting people in the movie who sort of opens the film with a 4th-wall breaking moment (not really to repeat itself, and I wish either Kramer had more of it or dropped it altogether as it's unnecessary).
Made in 1965 and filmed in black and white (which won artistic points with critics and the academy), this is a stunning cast of actors including Vivian Leigh (brilliant as usual in her last film role before succumbing to mental illness), George Segal, Lee Marvin, Jose Ferrer and Michael Dunn.
Oskar Werner, Simone Signoret, Vivien Leigh (in her last film role) Lee Marvin and Michael Dunn are standout in the major roles while Charles Korvin and Werner Klempler register memorable brief scenes.Ship of Fools is more of a 30's than 60's film with it's large all star cast (think Grand Hotel) with little room for derivation and improvisation that would inform the style of the era it was about to enter.
It lumbers at times with some characters, such as the insipid bickering between young American lovers played by George Segal and Liz Ashley but overall Ship of Fools quality acting makes it worth boarding..
Abby Mann and Stanley Kramer came together again after their classic collaboration in "Judgment at Nuremberg" and became the nucleus of a tremendous cast and crew that put together another great film.Oskar Werner heads an amazing ensemble in a powerful performance as the ill-fated ship's doctor.
She has some savagely comic scenes with Lee Marvin, the last one being a scene where he mistakenly in the dark takes her for one of the prostitutes aboard the ship and she beats him to a pulp.Jose Greco as Pepe, the head of the Spanish Dance troupe who also pimps for some of his dancers is excellent in a role of a hard-bitten and malevolent character.George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley do the best they can in perhaps the most poorly written roles as the star-crossed young lovers.
Other characters on the ship include: an aging American divorcée , Mary Treadwell (Vivien Leigh); a washed up baseball player, Tenny (Lee Marvin); and two American lovers, Jenny and David (Elizabeth Ashley and George Segal).