Diagonaldi Very well executed

Holstra Boring, long, and too preachy.

ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

SnoopyStyle It's 1939 Germany right before the war. The Nazis have sent the MS St. Louis off to carry 937 Jewish refugees to Cuba as propaganda. The passengers range from the rich, to the poor, and the fearful prosecuted. The ship itself and its services are luxurious. Captain Schroeder (Max von Sydow) is not a party member and works to help the passengers. Nazi operative Otto Schiendick is inserted into the crew and ferments dissent. Upon arrival in Cuba, only 28 are allowed to disembark while the others' visas are invalidated retroactively. Schroeder tries to find sanctuary in America and Canada to no avail, and is forced to return to Europe.The cast is stuffed and overloaded with class A actors. The movie is trying to follow too many people. It leaves the intensity low and the story scattered. It moves too slowly and is too long. It's a great historical epic of human failings. It's too bad that the movie isn't better. The subject matter deserves it.

lastliberal Despite the fact that this film had three Oscar nominations, and several Golden Globe nominations with one win (Katharine Ross), and a boatload of stars, it is not worth watching so much for it's quality (marginal) but for the story of how we knew what was happening to the Jews before World War II and did little to stop it.This is the story of 937 Jews that were put on a boat to Havana with useless documents, as the German government had no intention of letting them off the ship. They were denied entry into Cuba, and the US also denied them entry before they finally were saved by a social service agency and allowed to land in Belgium. Of course, that would prove ultimately fatal for two-thirds of them as the war started just two months later.Why would Germany do this? Simple. By sending a ship of Jews to the America's and having them turned away, they negated any right the US would have to complain when they started exterminating Jews. Clever of them, and our government fell right into their trap. Our support for Israel is not so much that we love the Jews, but a massive guilt for our participation in their extermination.There were some great performances in this otherwise mediocre film: Lee Grant and Katherine Ross; some good performances: Ben Gazzara, Faye Dunaway; and the film debut of Jonathan Pryce (POTC 1. 2. & 3, Tomorrow Never Dies).Check it out.

moonspinner55 Nazi atrocities hang over the heads of some 937 Jewish refugees who are allowed to board the S.S. St. Louis in Hamburg, Germany, bound for Havana in 1939, but corrupt Cuban dignitaries (and apathetic other countries) manage to find unjust legalities which prevent the ocean-liner from docking. Dramatized true account with a star-studded cast filling the roles of the passengers (professors, lawyers, teachers, one rabbi, a Nazi spy, at least two children, a Christian ship's captain, and Faye Dunaway, looking wonderfully turned-out as the wife of a frustrated doctor). With anti-Semitism making a wave through Havana, nobody there is anxious to take on the Jews (they are looked on as charity cases), but the personalities in these excursions are static at best, with Ben Gazzara playing a globe-trotting businessman attempting to bargain on behalf of the voyagers (he seems to come from a different film altogether). Produced (or, one may say, packaged) by '70s tycoon Sir Lew Grade, the proceedings verge on the edge of disaster-movie clichés (with the appearance and the pacing of a television mini-series). The material warrants attention, but the melodrama inherent in the situation continually falters--gummed up with ungainly issues, overdrawn hysteria (Sam Wanamaker's suicide attempt), flagrant sentiment (Katharine Ross' Havana prostitute), and thuggish violence (it's bad enough that the two male teachers--scrawny and with their heads shaved--have been through hell, this narrative gives them more of the same, which is about as entertaining as watching victims at a firing squad). Dunaway, coolly regal and ice-pack gorgeous, approaches her part like visiting royalty, and gives the film a little goose. **1/2 from ****

Kieran Green Voyage of the Damned is a criminally little seen all star cast drama with a veritable who's who of cinema. the story is heartbreaking and true it was all to do with a mass propaganda exercise in which a thousand or more Jews were to leave hamburg for the sunny tropics of Cuba but were never allowed to disembark, the rest of the film shows the dramatic efforts in which the passengers do to seek asylum, magnificent the casting is Ben Gazzara headlines the film has real life humanitarian Morris Troper, Victor Spinetti, plays a German doctor who tries to get his kids off the ship, Orson Welles plays a Cuban diplomat, Katherine Ross is a kindly prostitute, and Malcolm Mcdowell plays a young steward.this film is strangely listed on my VHS with the running time of 2 hours and fifty eight minutes, the current region 2 DVD is at a running time of 2 hours and thirty minutes! so it seems their has been some cutting.