SHIP OF FOOLS

This 1965 film couldn't be made now.  Imagine asking an American audience to sit through 150 minutes of assorted characters on an ocean voyage doing nothing much, other than performing some sort of allegory as to the nature of human existence, where the two biggest roles go to an Austrian actor and a French actress!

Even in the 1960s it can't have seemed a very commercial proposition, except that it is an adaptation of a 1962 bestseller.  

Given that it takes place in 1934 on a German passenger ship going from Mexico to Germany, via Spain, I was expecting Nazism to crop up, and indeed it does.

There is a German salesman, Lowenthal, who is Jewish, so naturally he is excluded from sitting at the captain's table at mealtimes.  Prominent among the German passengers who do enjoy the honour of sitting there is a businessman, Rieber, played by José Ferrer, who dominates the conversation, loudly extolling the virtues of nationalism and eugenics.   The captain, being a civilised type, wrongly thinks that such views are too absurd to be attractive to the German people.

It is Rieber who makes sure that Lowenthal is excluded, as well as a dwarf named Glocken, and a German passenger, Freytag, whose wife is Jewish.  We later learn that Freytag is now separated from his wife, because he didn't stand by her when she was being ostracised, and this cowardice on his part is now tearing him apart.  

Lowenthal is an optimist who takes his treatment as a Jew in his stride because he has faith that people are fundamentally good.  At one point he even says there are one million German Jews, so what are the Nazis going to do, kill them all?  

Rieber and Lowenthal share a cabin together, which is a bit awkward but this potentially interesting situation is not developed.  This is rather typical in a film where quite a few characters have very little by way of a story arc over the course of the voyage.   

For example, Mrs Treadwell (played by Vivien Leigh in her last film performance) starts off as a rich embittered middle-aged woman and that is what she remains.

Lee Marvin has a small but memorable role as an unsophisticated former baseball player who spends the voyage fruitlessly seeking out sex.

George Segal is miscast as a young artist who spends the voyage in an up-and-down relationship with his girlfriend which I didn't find very interesting.

Two characters whose lives do change for the better are a couple of youngsters who with a bit of encouragement from other passengers rebel against their parents.

Leaving the best to last, what keeps the film afloat is the relationship which evolves into a romance between the jaded ship's doctor (played by Oskar Werner) and 'La Condesa' (played by the great Simone Signoret).  

She is being deported from Cuba to a Spanish prison in Tenerife for illegally aiding the rebel cause in the Cuban Revolution of 1933.  And she has an opiate addiction, whilst he has a serious heart condition.  It's bound to end badly and it does, but their relationship is so beautifully played it scarcely seems to matter.  Both were deservedly nominated for Oscars.

The dwarf Glocken breaks the fourth wall at the start and end of the film to address us the audience, mainly to tell us that the ship is indeed full of fools.  Which of course raises the related questions of in what way are they fools, and what on earth is this film about?   

According to my all-knowing AI companion, the passengers are trapped in a state of wilful ignorance, denial or self-absorption, acting as a microcosm of a society blindly approaching disaster in the form of World War II.  I can't improve on that.