Voyage of the Damned, The (1976): Stuart Rosenberg’s Fact-Inspired, Shallow Melodrama, with All-Star Cast

Shortly before the end, it is revealed that the governments of Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and the U.K. have each agreed to accept a share of the passengers as refugees. As they cheer and clap at the news, footnotes disclose the fates of some of the main characters.

It is suggested that more than 600 of the 937 passengers who did not resettle in Britain but in other European nations instead were ultimately deported and murdered in Nazi concentration camps.

The extremely large ensemble is, in fact, one of the film’s major shortcomings.  There are no real or fully fleshed characters in this film, only symbolic figures that serve an ideological function. Each of the stars has a cameo role, basically reduced to two or three brief scenes, in which we witness bits of information

Thus, the treatment is undermined by fictionalization of the horrendous details, cheap melodramatic devices, and a lush visual style that often accentuates the trivial details rather than substantial dilemmas. For instance, the first reel is devoted to a dance ball aborad the ship, with littke or no dialogue.

Inadvertently, the picture calls attention to its artifice, such as the incoherent accents or the terrible wigs that most of the stars wear; the worst is that of Oskar Werner.

Films dealing with “serious themes,” like Hitlerand Nazism, the Holocaust,  often get ultra attention from Oscar voters, which may explain why the rambling text was nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar! (See below).

Greeted with mixed to negative reviews, this prentious feature, released as an “event movie” during the much desired Christmas season, was a big commercial flop, failing even to recoup its budget.

Cast
Faye Dunaway as Denise Kreisler
Max von Sydow as Captain Schroeder
Oskar Werner as Professor Egon Kreisler
Malcolm McDowell as Max Gunter
Orson Welles as José Estedes
James Mason as Dr. Juan Remos
Lee Grant as Lili Rosen
Katharine Ross as Mira Hauser
Ben Gazzara as Morris Troper
Luther Adler as Professor Weiler
Michael Constantine as Luis Clasing
Denholm Elliott as Admiral Canaris
José Ferrer as Manuel Benitez
Lynne Frederick as Anna Rosen
Helmut Griem as Otto Schiendick
Julie Harris as Alice Fienchild
Wendy Hiller as Rebecca Weiler
Paul Koslo as Aaron Pozner
Nehemiah Persoff as Mr. Hauser
Fernando Rey as President Bru
Leonard Rossiter as Commander Von Bonin
Maria Schell as Mrs. Hauser
Victor Spinetti as Dr. Erich Strauss
Janet Suzman as Leni Strauss
Sam Wanamaker as Carl Rosen
Keith Barron as Purser Mueller
Ian Cullen as Radio Officer
David Daker as First Officer
Brian Gilbert as Laurenz Schulman
Constantine Gregory as Navigation Officer (credited as Constantin de Goguel)
Georgina Hale as Lotte Schulman
Don Henderson as Engineering Officer
Bernard Hepton as Milton Goldsmith
Anthony Higgins as Seaman Heinz Berg
Donald Houston as Dr. Glauner
Frederick Jaeger as Werner Mannheim
David de Keyser as Joseph Joseph
Della McDermott as Julia Strauss
Günter Meisner as Robert Hoffman (credited as Guenter Meisner)
Jonathan Pryce as Joseph Manasse
Marika Rivera as Madame in Bordello
Ina Skriver as Singer
Milo Sperber as Rabbi
Philip Stone as Secretary
Adele Strong as Mrs. Schulman
Genevieve West as Sarah Strauss
Carl Duering as German Ambassador (uncredited)
Tom Laughlin as Engineering Officer (uncredited)
Laura Gemser as Estedes’ friend

Credits:

Directed by Stuart Rosenberg
Screenplay by Steve Shagan, David Butler, based on Voyage of the Damned, 1974 book by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts
Produced by Robert Fryer, William Hill
Cinematography Billy Williams
Edited by Tom Priestley
Music by Lalo Schifrin

Production company: ITC Entertainment

Distributed by Rank Film Distributors (UK)
AVCO Embassy Pictures (US)

Release dates: Dec 19, 1976 (Premiere); Dec 22 (LA and NYC)

Running time: 155 minutes
Budget $7.3 million
Box office $1,750,000