Ship of Fools (film)

Ship of Fools is a 1965 American drama film directed by Stanley Kramer, set on board an ocean liner bound for Germany from Mexico in 1933. It stars a prominent ensemble cast of 11 stars — Vivien Leigh (in her final film role), Simone Signoret, Jose Ferrer, Lee Marvin, Oskar Werner, Elizabeth Ashley, George Segal, Jose Greco, Michael Dunn, Charles Korvin and Heinz Ruehmann. It also marked Christiane Schmidtmer's first U.S. production filmed in Black and white to Technicolor (The Wizard of Oz).

Ship of Fools, which was based on Katherine Anne Porter's 1962 novel of the same name, was highly regarded, with reviewers praising the cast's performance but also noting, at 150 minutes, the movie's overlong (for 1965) runtime. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards in 1966, including for Best Picture, Best Actor for Oskar Werner, Best Actress for Simone Signoret, and Best Supporting Actor for Michael Dunn. It won for Best Art Direction, Black-and-White and Best Cinematography, Black-and-White.

Ship of Fools was the only English-language film in the nearly 70-year acting career of German film actor Heinz Rühmann, one of the most famous German actors of the 20th century.

Synopsis
The action on the Ship of Fools takes place almost entirely on board a passenger ship in 1933, between Veracruz Mexico and Bremerhaven, Germany. Most of the scenes unfold on the First Class deck or among the upper middle-class passengers, but the ship is carrying 600 displaced workers, far more than the ship is certified to carry and they're assigned to squalid conditions in steerage. They are all being deported back to Spain by the order of the Cuban dictator, Gerardo Machado. Many passengers bound for Nazi Germany are happy, some are apprehensive, while others downplay the significance of fascist politics. Passenger attitudes differ among those who feel "superior", who exclude and demean others, and the "excluded" passengers, who tend to be sympathetic and supportive of others.

Introductory comments by Michael Dunn
"My name is Carl Glocken and this... is a ship of fools. I'm a fool and you'll meet more fools as we go along... this tub is packed with them. Emancipated ladies... ball players... lovers... dog lovers... ladies of joy... tolerant Jews... dwarfs... all kinds... and who knows... if you look closely enough, you may even find yourself on board."

Plot
The ship's medical officer, Dr. Schumann, takes a special interest in La Condesa, a Spanish countess being deported from Cuba who has an opiate addiction which he reluctantly accommodates with prescriptions. Under arrest, she is being transported to a Spanish prison on the Canary Island of Tenerife for illegally hiding and helping arm agitators. The 600 laborers in steerage, deported to Spain because of the low market price of Cuban sugar, cheer the activist Condesa as she boards the ship under police escort. The Condesa reveals to the doctor that she was motivated by seeing the impoverished conditions under which the 5,000 laborers lived, under "patronage" of the man with whom she lived in luxury, supported by their labor. While she manipulates the doctor to cope with her sense of doom, her activism is in sympathy with the doctor's humanitarian insistence that the laborers in steerage be treated like human beings rather than cargo. Their shared sympathies soon evolve into love, though both realize it is a hopeless passion. The doctor conceals having a heart condition.

Selected passengers—mostly Germans—are invited to dine each night at the captain's table. Some are amused and others offended by the anti-Semitic rants of a German (originally Austrian) businessman, Rieber, who begins an affair with Lizzi, who admires him until learning he is married. Rieber pontificates on topics such as "how we can expunge foreign influences and restore Germany to its National greatness" and the desirability of "exterminating the unfit at birth". The captain is reassured by Rieber's rants, believing that nobody can ever take his party seriously. Though Jews and dwarfs are excluded from the table, the Hutten’s dog, Baby, is allowed. When an animal-loving steerage laborer drowns saving Baby, who was thrown overboard by mischievous children, the Huttens worry about Baby and ignore the dead rescuer.

The Jewish Lowenthal is seated at a side table with a dwarf named Glocken, and the two bond over their social exclusion. Later Freytag, a German passenger, is shocked to find himself blackballed from the Captain's Table when Rieber learns Freytag's wife is Jewish. Eventually Freytag discloses that he is separated from his Jewish wife, having found his marriage too detrimental for his career. Lowenthal, displaying the Iron Cross he earned in WWI, counsels Glocken regarding tactical accommodation to the Nazis, stating that Germany has been good for the Jews and the Jews have been good for Germany, "We are Germans first and Jews second...There are nearly a million Jews in Germany. What are they going to do, kill all of us?" Glocken tells him that he may be the biggest fool on the ship.

An American artist couple, David and Jenny, have a passionate but rocky relationship. David is disconsolate at his lack of success as a socially committed artist; the independent Jenny finds his art unsellable and is not sufficiently willing to build him up. He is dismissive of her artistic talent, which she herself undervalues. David expresses that whoever shares his life will need to accept that his art will always supersede her. Jenny fears that their life together will be endlessly fighting with neither willing to put the other’s needs before their own.

Passengers are entertained nightly by a troupe of flamenco musicians and dancers, whose leader pimps the women in the troupe. Johann, an unpaid caregiver to Herr Graf, his invalid uncle, ignores the wholesome and insecure Elsa, who is traveling with her parents. Instead, Johann is attracted to one of the dancers, who rejects him for inability to pay. Johann threatens his stingy uncle if he does not give him money which has been promised to him in his uncle's will. He loses his virginity to one of the dancers, who treats him with gentleness when he pays.

Mary Treadwall, a divorced fading beauty hoping to recapture her youth in Paris, is "too far from the cradle" to interest the captain. She disdains the lieutenant who shows interest, dismissing him first as doing his duty to "unattended" women and later as insignificant. When fellow American, former baseball player Bill Tenny is seated at her table, she finds him crass. Bill expresses surprise at the open hostility toward the Jews onboard; she sarcastically replies that "maybe he was too busy lynching Negroes to take time out for the Jews." Tenny pesters one of the flamenco dancers, believing that buying a magnum of champagne entitles him to her favors. She gives him the cabin number of the "snotty" Mrs. Treadwell. In a drunken stupor, Tenny accosts Mrs. Treadwell, who momentarily responds passionately until she realizes that he has mistaken her for a prostitute; she then slaps him repeatedly, crying out for help.

The ship arrives in Tenerife where the deported workers from steerage disembark. The doctor briefly considers staying with the Condesa, but the captain calls him foolish, contending that the Condesa manipulated him for drugs. After an emotionally painful farewell with the doctor, the Condesa is forced to exit the ship under Civil Guard escort. When the captain tells the distraught doctor she isn’t worth his anguish, the doctor replies, "When I think of the things I have seen on this ship, the stupid cruelties, the vanities…she looked into the garbage dump, she did something about it, and we are the intelligent, civilized people who carry out orders we are given no matter what they may be." The doctor dies of a heart attack before the ship reaches Bremerhaven; upon arrival his body is unloaded in a coffin with his estranged wife and sons in attendance.

At disembarkation, as in a parade, most characters proceed with "business as usual", having learned nothing on the voyage. The last passenger to leave the "Ship of Fools" is Glocken, who speaks directly to camera, as he did in the opening minutes of the film. Glocken asks the film's audience if they are thinking, "What has all this to do with us? Nothing," he declares with a sardonic dismissive smile and exits into the crowd.

Songs
Music by Ernest Gold Lyrics by Jack Lloyd
 * "Heute abend geh'n wir bummeln auf der Reeperbahn" ("Tonight we're going for a stroll on the Reeperbahn")
 * "Irgendwie, irgendwo, irgendwann" ("Somehow, somewhere, sometime")

Production


Katherine Anne Porter's novel Ship of Fools was published in 1962. The essayist and short story author's only novel was the culmination of a 20-year-long project that was based on her reminiscences of a 1931 ocean cruise she had taken from Veracruz to Germany.

Producer David O. Selznick wanted to purchase the film rights, but United Artists owned the property and demanded $400,000. The novel was adapted for film by Abby Mann. Producer and director Stanley Kramer, who ended up with the film, planned to star Vivien Leigh but was initially unaware of her fragile mental and physical health. The film proved to be her last film and in later recounting her work, Kramer remembered her courage in taking on the difficult role, "She was ill, and the courage to go ahead, the courage to make the film--was almost unbelievable." Leigh's performance was tinged by paranoia and resulted in outbursts that marred her relationship with other actors, although both Simone Signoret and Lee Marvin were sympathetic and understanding. In particular, during one scene shoot, she hit Lee Marvin so hard with a spiked shoe, that it bruised his face.

At the conclusion of filming, screenwriter Mann reportedly threw a party for almost the entire cast and crew except Gila Golan, whose performance Mann was reputedly not happy with.

Reception
Although well received by audiences, Ship of Fools was looked at by some reviewers as a Grand Hotel (1932) afloat, a film which had often been imitated. "Preachy and melodramatic" was another criticism, although the cast was universally praised.

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times saw the film as much more, "Stanley Kramer has fetched a powerful, ironic film ... there is such wealth of reflection upon the human condition in Ship of Fools and so subtle an orchestration of the elements of love and hate, achieved through an expert compression of the novel by Mr. Kramer and his script writer, Abby Mann, that it is really not fair to tag it with the label of any previous film. It has its own quiet distinction in the way it illuminates a theme." He also singled out the work of Oskar Werner. In a similar vein, Variety noted, "Director-producer Stanley Kramer and scenarist Abby Mann have distilled the essence of Katherine Anne Porter's bulky novel in a film that appeals to the intellect and the emotions."

The film was banned in Franco's Spain because of its anti-fascist stance.

On Rotten Tomatoes, Ship of Fools holds a rating of 58% from 24 reviews.

Awards and nominations
Vivien Leigh won the L'Étoile de Cristal for her performance in a leading role.

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:
 * 2005: AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores – Nominated

Home media
The film has been issued on VHS, laserdisc and DVD. The film's standalone DVD release is an open matte 1.33:1 transfer with no supplements. The film was later reissued in widescreen with supplements in a Stanley Kramer box set from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Currently, the film is also available in a budget-priced two-disc, four-movie collection DVD licensed from Sony to Mill Creek Entertainment. All four films are presented in their original theatrical aspect ratios and are anamorphically enhanced. The film has been released on Blu-ray in a double feature pack with the film Lilith via Mill Creek.