Voyage of the Damned


Voyage of the Damned is a 1976 drama film directed by Stuart Rosenberg, with an all-star cast featuring Faye Dunaway, Oskar Werner, Lee Grant, Max von Sydow, James Mason, and Malcolm McDowell.
The story was inspired by true events concerning the fate of the ocean liner carrying Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba in 1939. It was based on a 1974 book written by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts with the same title. The screenplay was written by David Butler and Steve Shagan. The film was produced by ITC Entertainment and released by Avco Embassy Pictures.

Plot

Based on historic events, this dramatic film concerns the 1939 voyage of, which departed from Hamburg carrying 937 Jews from Germany, ostensibly bound for Havana, Cuba. The passengers, having seen and suffered rising anti-Semitism in Germany, realised this might be their only chance to escape. The film details the emotional journey of the passengers, who gradually become aware that their passage was planned as an exercise in propaganda, and that it had never been intended that they disembark in Cuba. Rather, they were to be set up as pariahs, to set an example before the world. As a Nazi official states in the film, when the whole world has refused to accept the Jews as refugees, no country can blame Germany for their fate.
The Cuban government refuses entry to the passengers, and the liner heads to the United States. As it waits off the Florida coast, the passengers learn that the United States also has rejected them, leaving the captain 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 states his intention to run the liner aground on a reef off the southern coast of England, to allow the passengers to be rescued and reach safety there.
Shortly before the film's end, it is revealed that the governments of Belgium, France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom 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, suggesting that more than 600 of the 937 passengers, who did not resettle in the United Kingdom but in the other European nations, ultimately were deported and were murdered in Nazi concentration camps.

Cast

The book was published in 1974. The Los Angeles Times called it "a human document of rare and discerning power". The book was a best seller, and the authors earned an estimated £500,000 from it.
Rights to the book were acquired in 1974. It was originally envisioned as an ABC Movie of the Week but its budget of $7.3 million was too expensive.
The film was the first feature of Associated General Films.
Dunaway was paid $500,000 plus a percentage of the profits.
The movie was filmed on board the chartered Italian ocean liner Irpinia, which was fitted with two false funnels in order to resemble St. Louis. It was also shot on location in Barcelona, Spain, St. Pancras Chambers in London, and at the EMI Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire.

Actual death toll

The true death toll is uncertain. The 1974 book that was the basis of the film estimated a much lower number of deaths. By using statistical analysis of survival rates for Jews in various Nazi-occupied countries, Thomas and Morgan-Witts estimated the fate of the 621 St. Louis passengers who were not given refuge in Cuba or the United Kingdom : 44 of the 224 refugees that settled in France likely were murdered in the Holocaust, 62 Holocaust murders amongst the 214 that reached Belgium, and 121 Holocaust murders amongst the 181 that settled in the Netherlands, for a total of 227 of the refugees that came under occupation were likely murdered by the Nazis. In 1998, Scott Miller and Sarah Ogilvie of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum traced the survivors from the voyage, concluding that a total of 254 refugees were murdered by the Nazis.

Release

The film opened on 22 December 1976 in four theatres in New York and Los Angeles.

Box Office

According to Lew Grade who helped finance the film, the movie "should have done better" at the box office. He wrote in his memoirs "I thought it was one of the most moving and important films I'd seen in a long time. I just couldn't understand why it didn't become a success" adding that "strangely enough, it did outstanding business in Japan."

Alternate version

The complete, uncut version of the film was 182 minutes long. It was released only once, on the Magnetic Video label in 1980.

Awards

The film was nominated for three Academy Awards:
It was nominated for six Golden Globe Awards, winning one:
It was nominated in the categories of:
The film score was composed, arranged and conducted by Lalo Schifrin and the soundtrack album was released on the Entr'Acte label in 1977.

Track listing

Personnel