Voyage of the Damned Reviews

Confusing historical drama occasionally buoyed by eccentric star cameos. Directed with a well-meaning but heavy hand by Stuart Rosenberg (SAVE THE TIGER), VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED opens in 1939 as a group of Jews are expelled from Nazi Germany and loaded on a ship bound for Havana, where, the Germans are confident, they'll be denied refuge. (The whole scheme--based on an actual incident--is a public relations move: the Nazis want expose the hypocrisy of their international critics by demonstrating that no country is willing to take the Jews.) Turned away by Cuba, the ship, skippered by "good German" Schroeder (Max von Sydow), must sail back to Germany, where certain death awaits the passengers. These include the sophisticated Kreislers (Faye Dunaway and Oskar Werner); an elderly professor and his wife (Luther Adler and Wendy Hiller); and the Hausers (Nehemiah Persoff and Maria Schell), who look forward to reuniting with their daughter (Katharine Ross), a hooker in Havana. Also in Cuba are industrialist Estedes (Orson Welles); Remos (James Mason), a sympathetic minister; local bureaucrat Benitez (Jose Ferrer); and Morris Troper (Ben Gazzara), who heads a Jewish agency. The film cuts hurriedly among all the above (and a few more), often to puzzling effect; it plays like the TV miniseries it was originally slated to be. The huge cast seems to share in the sense of confusion, and what might have been an excellent treatment of an important story merely falls flat.