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Movie:		7.0
Picture:		6.0
Sound:		6.0
Extras:		2.0
Score:		6.0

Director(s):	Stuart Rosenberg
Writer(s):	Steve Shagan, David Butler
Starring:	Ben Gazzara • Faye Dunaway • Lee Grant • Max von Sydow • Orson Welles • Oscar Werner
Genre:	Drama
Release Date:	April 21, 2009
Rated:

List Price:	DVD - $14.98
Amazon:

Throughout Voyage of the Damned, I was reminded of Stanley Kubrick’s famous criticism of Schindler’s List: “The Holocaust is about six million people who get killed. Schindler's List was about six hundred people who don't.” In contrast to that film, Damned concludes its action in 1939, well before several of the major concentration camps opened their gates and the “final solution” went into effect. In short, this represents the exact same sort of narrow perspective on the Holocaust that List does, but at least acknowledges it in a way that List (or, more accurately, its supporters) perhaps does not. But as a result, the film lacks the grounding or insight that would elevate it beyond a mere historical account, because in its current form, it is severely lacking in the category of raison d’etre.

Voyage of the Damned was produced at the point when Hollywood was just initially becoming aware of the marketing potential for Holocaust films, and it started producing them the only way it knew how: as lavish star-studded spectacles that treat the subject matter with a sort of quiet reserved dignity that never breaks into too strong an emotion or too impassioned a plea for human understanding. To be fair, though: what a cast! And what amazing production values. The story of the SS St. Louis (a ship carrying Jews to Havana harbor on a voyage fully sanctioned by the German government, represented here as a ploy on the part of the Nazi party to turn public sentiment against the Jews when they are turned away once they reach Cuba, and would thus hopefully be seen as a public nuisance and liability) is rendered with great historical detail and with little to no sanctimonious grandstanding. The great Max von Sydow portrays the ship’s captain, a German whose true loyalties lie with the laws of the sea as opposed to the shifting tides of European politics, with Malcolm McDowell as his trusty right-hand man. Faye Dunaway, Jonathan Pryce, Oscar Werner, and Lee Grant all play Jewish passengers of the ship. Orson Welles and James Mason play Cubans. Well, for the most part it’s respectful.

And it was better than I expected it to be. I admit I was daunted when I saw the film’s running time of two and a half hours, but I found the story reasonably engaging throughout that entire time and thought its frequent jumping from Hamburg to Havana to the ship was more successful than not. Even though buying Welles as Cuban is more of a stretch than I was prepared to go along with, the cast is uniformly fine, highlighted in particular by Sydow, McDowell, and Ben Gazzara as a Jew in Cuba exhausting all possible resources to be able to get them off the ship to avoid sending them back to Germany.

And then there’s the ending. I won’t reveal exactly how everything plays out, but suffice it to say, the story does not end with the resolution of the St. Louis incident. It goes on into events far more troubling than any one film could ever hope to express. But unlike a number of other films, this one fully acknowledges that and doesn’t begin to pretend that there is any sort of substantive solace to be found in these events when juxtaposed with the Holocaust. But then, after the film is over and you’ve taken whatever emotion out of it that you’re going to take, you can’t help but ask yourself why the film was made at all. This is certainly an interesting story, but it was not of any greater consequence than any number of other peripheral stories in any way related to the Holocaust. In a way, it gives you a greater appreciation for Schindler’s List which took a very definite stance on the importance of what it was showing, and stood by it to the very end - even if it didn’t make you accept that it made things ‘okay.’

Voyage of the Damned is a finely made film, but its impact diminishes when placed beside the historical import of what it depicts largely due to its failure to expose itself emotionally in any way or make any sort of meaningful statement.

DVD Bonus Features

The DVD comes in a Full Screen Presentation, with 2.0 stereo audio and optional English and Spanish subtitles.