Introduction

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 St. Louis 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.

Outline

Based on historic events, this dramatic film concerns the 1939 voyage of MS St. Louis, 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.

Trivia

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

Production & Filming Details

• Director: Stuart Rosenberg.
• Producers: Robert Fryer and William Hill.
• Writers: David Butler and Steve Shagan.
• Music: Lalo Schifrin.
• Cinematography: Billy Williams.
• Production: ITC Entertainment.
• Distributor: Rank Film Productions (UK) and AVCO Embassy Pictures (US).
• Release Date: 19 December 1976 (Premiere) and 22 December 1976 (New York & Los Angeles, US).
• Running Time: 155 minutes.
• Country: UK.
• Language: English.

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