| Voyage of the Damned | |
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film poster by Richard Amsel |
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| Directed by | Stuart Rosenberg |
| Produced by | Robert Fryer William Hill |
| Written by | David Butler Steve Shagan |
| Starring | Faye Dunaway Oskar Werner Lee Grant Max von Sydow James Mason Malcolm McDowell |
| Music by | Lalo Schifrin |
| Cinematography | Billy Williams |
| Distributed by | AVCO |
| Release date(s) | 22 December 1976 |
| Running time | 155 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
Voyage of the Damned is the title of a 1974 book written by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts, which was the basis of a 1976 drama film with the same title.[1] The story was inspired by true events concerning the fate of the MS St. Louis ocean liner carrying Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba in 1939.
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The film was directed by Stuart Rosenberg, with a screenplay by David Butler and Steve Shagan. It was produced by ITC Entertainment.
The cast included Faye Dunaway, Laura Gemser, Lee Grant, Oskar Werner, Sam Wanamaker, Lynne Frederick, Luther Adler, Wendy Hiller, Julie Harris, Nehemiah Persoff, Paul Koslo, Jonathan Pryce, Max von Sydow, Malcolm McDowell, Orson Welles, James Mason, Katharine Ross, José Ferrer, Ben Gazzara, Fernando Rey, Maria Schell, Janet Suzman, Helmut Griem and Denholm Elliott.
It was also the final film starring Oskar Werner.
Based on actual events, the story told of the MS St. Louis, which departed from Hamburg, Germany in 1939, carrying 937 Jews from Germany to Havana, Cuba. By this time, the Jews had suffered the rise of anti-Semitism and realised that this might be their last chance to escape. The film details the emotional journey of the passengers who gradually become aware that their passage has been an exercise in propaganda and that they were never intended to disembark in Cuba. Rather, they were to be used as examples before the world. A Nazi official said that when the whole world has refused to accept them as refugees, no country can blame Germany for the fate of the Jews.
The government of Cuba refuses entry to the passengers, and as the liner waits near the Florida coastline, they learn that the United States has also rejected them. They have no choice but to return to Europe. The captain tells a confidante that he has received a letter signed by 200 passengers saying they will join hands and jump into the sea rather than return to Germany. He says he is intending to deliberately run the liner aground on a reef off the southern coast of England.
Shortly before the film's end, it is revealed that the governments of the United Kingdom, Belgium, France and the Netherlands have each agreed to accept a share of the passengers as refugees. As they cheer and clap at the good news, footnotes disclose the fates of some of the main characters, and reveal that more than 600 of the ship's 937 passengers ultimately lost their lives in Nazi concentration camps. However, the book presents a much lower number: By using the survival rates for Jews in various countries, Thomas and Morgan-Witts estimated that about 180 of the St. Louis refugees in France, 152 of those in Belgium, and 60 of those in the Netherlands, survived the Holocaust. Adding to these the passengers who disembarked in England, they estimated that of the original 936 refugees (one man died during the voyage), roughly 709 survived and 227 were slain.[2][3] (See the relevant article.)
In 1998, Scott Miller and Sarah Ogilvie of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum traced the survivors from the voyage. The conclusion of their research was that a slightly higher total of 254 refugees died at the hands of the Nazis.
The film was nominated for three Academy Awards:
It was nominated for six Golden Globe awards, including "Best Picture". Katharine Ross won the award for "Best Actress in a Supporting Role".
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