We also meet young German (and, indeed, “Arian”) men like Max Gunter (Malcolm McDowell), who are more interested in love and romance than politics or separation of races, even if, in their present situation, they can’t fully grasp what these refugees have been through. This is appalling to Sam Wanamaker’s Carl Rosen, who sees this as nothing short of genetic treason. On the flip side is Egon Kreisler, a Jewish physician who takes his Hippocratic Oath so seriously that he counted Nazi officers among his patients before being selected for the title voyage. Louis who deplores the Nazi party and refuses to allow the party’s propaganda representative on his boat. Sure, many World War II films feature the token sympathetic Nazi who helps a Jewish escapee or an iconic savior like Oskar Schindler, but Voyage of the Damned allows for a much greater amount of grey areas in its characters, without the obvious black-and-white morality that many films of this kind demonstrate (and, considering the subject matter, are wise to do so).Īccordingly we meet Captain Schroeder (Max von Sydow in a typically excellent performance), skipper of the MS St. Voyage of the Damned is unique among period pieces of this kind in that a very strong line is drawn between “Nazi” and “German”. The film is called Voyage of the Damned (1976) and it sports an impressive all-star cast as well as the direction of Stuart Rosenberg, known for such remarkably diverse films as Cool Hand Luke (1967), The Amityville Horror (1979), The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984) and Let’s Get Harry (1986) (on which his directing credit was removed in favor of the sad pseudonym, “Alan Smithee”). Almost 30 years later, another film told almost the complete inversion of this, with a group of Jews being sent by the Nazis to their freedom in the United States (by way of Cuba) as part of a 1939 propaganda stunt. I recently reviewed for PopMatters a classic French Film Noir called The Damned (1947), about a group of Nazi war criminals escaping liberated France on a long voyage to South America.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |