The half-truth about pre-war anti-Semitism Port of Hamburg, May 1939. Until the Second World War, nothing remains, and from Germany to Cuba departs the last flight with formally free Jews, a total score of 937 persons. Why "formally free"? Because, according to the Nazi calculations, no country on the planet will want to accept restless Jewish refugees and they will have to return to the glorious German concentration camps. No animal in the world will have to point fingers at the Germans and accuse them of anti-Semitism. Take a look at your lineup.
If we talk about the idea, the tape of Stuart Rosenberg (the most famous of his paintings “Coldblooded Luke” with Paul Newman, plus in a couple of years will shoot the noble horror film “The Amityville Horror”), based on a literal historical event, in itself, interesting. Such a kind of “Ship of Fools” by Stanley Kramer, only with a more authentic plot. But it was the attempt to follow historical identity that destroyed Rosenberg’s tape. The director, in principle, failed to correctly place the accents, reducing the entire giant timekeeping picture into disparate and in no way combined stories of St. Louis passengers. There is no unifying general line here, except, of course, that everyone wants to get off the ship, if not to the ball, then definitely not back in Germany. Someone here swears, someone falls in love, someone dies, but all this is presented very atomistic and tedious.
In addition, Rosenberg failed to show the main thing – to denounce the Western countries, first of all the States and Canada, which shamefully refused to accept 900 Jews with pennies on their land. On the contrary, the main focus is on the scum from Germany and the corrupt officials of Cuba – they say that there were the main culprits of this story. But in the historical context, even the “saviors” from England, France, Belgium and Holland, who shamefully distributed “quotas” to refugees, are still scoundrels. And Rosenberg shyly bypasses all this, creating a very sugary plot in geopolitical terms.
However, the director had a chance to pull the film through a giant set of stars of varying freshness and recognition, but here he completely failed his work. The whole audience was playing some small stories, which in the end did not add up to something generally understandable. Formally, the first among equals here is Faye Dunaway, who is in 1976 at the peak of her acting popularity. At the end of this year, she won not quite deserved “Oscar” for “Teleset”, but in general, the actress is bright and expressive. Unless she was constantly unlucky with sane plots in her career, except for the almost debut film Bonnie and Clyde. And paired with Faye as her husband, 54-year-old Oscar Werner played his unexpected last film role. He played well, even for the role of Dr. Golden Globes. In general, a very underrated and underplayed actor.
A very left-wing nomination for the supporting role was received by Lee Grant, who a year earlier received an even more left-wing Oscar for the idiotic film Shampoo. The actress is textured and pretty, despite her almost half-ticket, but she played in her career mainly in all kinds of shit, although she was periodically noted not very deservedly by film academics. But Max von Sudov in the role of the soul captain of the ship Schroeder looked very worthy in the film, although his play was also not enough to save this film.
And then just briefly list who else managed to identify in this star vinaigrette. One of the hearty old ladies sitting at the head of her dying obese husband was played by 64-year-old Wendy Hiller, who in 1938 conquered Hollywood with a brilliant game in Pygmulion. Here lit up 50-year-old Austrian Maria Schell, in the distant 1956-th year played a good role in the French “Gervaise”. Malcolm McDowell moved here from the Clockwork Orange to the role of a German sailor in love, but after that type of actor, of course, some crazy person will always be expected. But she wasn't. Of the well-deserved and forgotten, James Mason, Orson Welles, Jose Ferrer and Fernando Rey immediately harried. The old men were clearly not in shock and, apart from their relatively recognizable faces, nothing decent could be brought to the cinema. But 36-year-old Katherine Ross, who once started her career brightly with Dustin Hoffmanov in The Graduate, even won the Golden Globe for the role of a prostitute. Hollywood has always loved giving awards for fallen characters. Finally, a certain Helmut Grimm coped with the role of the main antagonist in the tape - a Nazi scumbag, but still the scale of his hero did not pull on something particularly weighty.
The material for the film adaptation is worthy, albeit complex, and it was quite possible to draw something relatively decent from such a story. But the director who took up the project still does not have the qualities capable of creating a highly artistic product.
6 out of 10