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Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Absolutely the worst movie.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The acting in this movie is really good.

The cast was a magnet, imagine, Faye Dunaway, Orson Welles, Malcolm McDowell, James Mason, Oskar Werner, Max Von Sydow, Wendy Hiller, Lee Grant, Maria Schell, Katherine Ross and I could go on. The splendor of the cast can't manage to disguise the poverty of the script. A huge subject tackled in Stanley Kramer's Ship Of Fool and that film also had an extraordinary cast: Vivien Leigh, Simone Signoret, Lee Marvin, Jose Ferrer and even Oskar Werner who, strangely, was in both films. However, Stanley Kramer had a great script by Abby Mann (Judgment At Nuremberg) and some of the scenes are spectacular. Here in this Voyage nothing is piercing or memorable just a succession of cardboard TV style scenes. But, if you're into star gazing this voyage could give you enough stasfictions to feel you haven't wasted a full afternoon.

The fear of the unknown is often greater than facing the worst crisis that one can come across in one's lifetime, and often the worry is over nothing, but sometimes, those fears come true. For the displaced German Jews from Hamburg boarding a cruise ship for Cuba in 1939, their lives will never be the same after they leave their homeland. They aren't sure if they will be welcome, but anything's better than facing Hitler's Germany, an evil reminder of humanity at its worst. This all-star cast mixes together many famous actors of the stage and screen, many of them Oscar nominees or winners. That year's best actress, Faye Dunaway, was at the top of her career when she starred in this poignant film, and it's obvious that many of the actors surrounding her took this job, as she did, because of the important subject matter, something that is being dealt with around the world over 40 years later.As an upper-class German Jew, Dunaway is married to doctor Oskar Werner who has stirred the wrath of his own people by treating Nazi's, and as he tells the embittered Sam Wanamaker, he's taken a Hippocratic oath to treat those who come to him regardless of their politics. Two young men (Paul Koslo and Jonathan Pryce) are released from a concentration camp and ordered to leave Germany and never return on threat of immediate execution. Even before they can get to their ship, they are viciously beaten up by young members of the Nazi party who attack them for no reason and leave them bleeding on the street. The visible scars are still noticeable when they leave their homeland hopefully for freedom and a new life. Wanamaker is married to the devoted Lee Grant who is scared that her husband is falling apart in front of her and tries to keep their daughter (Lynne Frederick) from seeing this happen. An elderly woman (Wendy Hiller) looks over her dying husband with concern, while Nehemiah Persoff and Maria Schell strive to get to Cuba to be reunited with their daughter (Katherine Ross) who is pretending to be Christian and works as a high-class prostitute to stay alive. Sweet Julie Harris escorts two young children hoping to be reunited with their doctor father (Victor Spinetti) desperately trying to make sure they will be able to be reunited any way he can. Captain Max Von Sydow, a German Christian who has refused to join the Nazi party, must deal with Nazi's amongst the crew, especially the subtly nasty Helmut Griem who will not hesitate to kill a crew member who threatens to disrupt his plans. As this ship reaches Cuba, it becomes very apparent that political intrigue will keep them from being able to disembark. The star power continues here with Jose Ferrer, Orson Welles and James Mason all involved in different sides of the issue, and it becomes very apparent that the Antisemitism doesn't end with the Nazi's. Perhaps there are way too many stars, and some of them (most notably Harris whom I longed to see more of) had little to do. But the chance to see powerhouse actors like Harris, Dunaway, Grant, Wanamaker and Von Sydow all working together will keep you intrigued for the 2 1/2 hours of this film's length. Key scenes between Dunaway and Grant as the situation grows dire and tragedy threatens to consume them will have your hands wringing or gripped in anger and fear as well.As these diverse characters face the fears of returning to Hamburg for immediate transfer to a concentration camp, one thing becomes very apparent about them. They are all strong in different ways, family devoted and compassionate about each other. As one of the characters says, they've had to learn to have courage because of all the displacements over the centuries, and even with all that, there is something about these people that makes you want to see them saved. For whatever reason Jews had become the most unjustifiably hated culture in the world, this shows that the stereotypes, the envy, the inherent disgust towards them is unwarranted. Even when the Nazi's and their supporters are being cultured and polite, there is an underlying evil even in a simple statement of them being able to walk on water, a slam towards the belief that as a nation, they were responsible for murdering Jesus nearly two millenniums before. While this didn't have me shaking in horror and anger as "Schindler's List" and other Nazi themed movies, it did leave me touched, and reminded me that freedom for everybody is precious and we should never allow it to be taken away from us, no matter what the cost may be.

An ambitious effort to tell the true story of SS St.Louis in May-June 1939 on a cruise to Cuba with only Jewish German passengers as a Nazi propaganda display in all its polyphonic complexity, has above all succeeded in rendering and making the horrible sadness about it real. Sam Wanamaker takes the lead as the most desperate of them all, who, when it becomes clear that they were sent to Cuba only to be returned to certain death in Germany, tries to kill himself jumping over board, while Max von Sydow stands for some uprightness and honor in a hopeless situation, Oskar Werner and Faye Dunaway make a nice couple of some refinement and elegance but with their integrity sadly lost, Orson Welles dominates the corruption in Havana, Ben Gazzara is the indefatigable fighter for some human rights where there are none, and we have the tragedy of the steward (Malcolm McDowell) and his tragic love, and of course the Nazi villains, apart form other outstanding actors like James Mason, Julie Harris, Maria Schell, Wendy Hiller, Jonathan Pryce, Katharine Ross, Denholm Elliott as Admiral Canaris and many others. Still the film is not overloaded with stardom, but they are all almost discreet, dwarfed by the overwhelming tragedy of the drama situation. What adds very much to the quality of the film is how the music is composed - the very sensitive and adequate but still discreet music of Lalo Schifrin is contrasted with very typical and catchy dance music of the times, Cuban rumbas, Glenn Miller, Strauss waltzes and things like that, illustrating the grotesqueness of the cruel Nazi practical joke on ordinary and innocent Jewish Germans who are kept completely unknowing of what grim play they are being used in. The film is very conscientiously made in an evident effort to strike at the completeness of the indescribable sadness of the inhuman fake luxury cruise, which effort definitely has succeeded.

This is a very down to earth film about German Jews who were kicked out of Hamburg, Germany and were placed on a ship called the S/S St. Louis headed to Havana, Cuba. This ship carried 937 passengers, some children and Jewish people with all kinds of backgrounds, even prisoners from concentration camps who were teachers. The Nazi movement was showing great Anti-Semitism during the Year 1939 before World War II started. Faye Dunaway, (Denise Kreisler) gave an outstanding performance as a very pretty, rich, sexy wife of Dr. Egan Kreisler, (Oskar Werner). There is a young man who works on the ship and is a German and he falls in love with a very pretty Jewish girl and they become very close together and had to make some horrible decisions. Great film which tells the true story of what happened to most of the people who were on board this horrible cruise of Nazi Germany.