Ship of Fools *

I’m going to make a little confession here; I’m not a Stanley Kramer guy. That can be dangerous to say because he made a lot of movies that contained some very powerful messages. Unfortunately, most of those movies weren’t particularly good. By trashing the movie some believe that you are trashing the message and that’s not the case.

Stanley Kramer certainly made some decent movies and at least one great one in Inherit the Wind, but it was almost impossible to botch that wonderful story. The major problem in just about all of Kramer's movies is that all of the characters are one dimensional and there is no nuance to the story. Good and bad. That's it.

It’s like if you want to make a statement about war being bad why not just write out a sign that says “War is Bad.” Actually you could just say “War Bad.” Even more powerful. If you are going to make a three hour movie, you need more than a message. You need a story, compelling characters, good writing and all the other stuff. But to have a compelling story sometimes you have to explain the hound’s side before getting to the fox. Stan doesn’t seem too big on that.

So that brings us to Ship of Fools (1965) because I can't think of anyway to stall further. This is Kramer's attempt to modernize Magic Mountain, which was a Thomas Mann story taking place prior to World War I showing that Europe was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. To show this, he used patients in a sanatorium, with each person representing a different theme (radicalism, humanism, duty, etc.). It's certainly a great book, but I wouldn't grab it for that afternoon at the beach.

Kramer tried to do the same thing, taking his story from a novel written by some woman that I don't remember. The two major differences are that the story takes place on a luxury cruise liner and it deals with World War II. There are also two major problems. First, Mann started writing his novel in 1912 before the war broke out. Ship of Fools was written in the early 1960s, a little after the war ended I believe. This makes a line like "What can the Nazi's do? Kill six million of us?" sound ridiculous (but since the movie is set before World War II it makes sense to Kramer). The second problem is that the First World War was nuanced. No one ever accused the Nazis of nuance.

Let's see any other way I can stall here. Want to hear how my day went? I had a long talk with...alright, alright, I'm going. I'll just review it as I watch it. We're doing shots for this one. That 151 rum will be the official drink of this review with an opium chaser. So Michael Dunn, a dwarf as he is kind enough to tell us, goes through his opening speech (Roosevelt had nothing on these guys) telling us that this is a Ship of Fools (hence the title), everyone on the boat is a fool, and maybe, just maybe, I can see myself on the boat as one of the fools. Yes, I can.

Now we are introduced to the Macy's-sized parade of characters. There's Lee Marvin as a baseball player, who is racist and ignorant, and can't grasp how others don't understand his game (see, he is the ugly American of the group). There is Jose Ferrer, who doesn't like Jews and believes that all people who are not Aryan should be killed as well as anyone with any mental defects. He would be the Nazi. (By the way, even Hitler had more subtlety then this beaut). Let me stop here for a second to say that Marvin and Ferrer really do some heroic work here with some stodgy material. Ferrer especially stands out as he usually does.

Two more shots, a couple of cigarettes and back to the movie. Julius Lowenthal, the Jewish philosopher (he would be the Jew of the group), represents the good guys. Vivian Leigh and Simone Signoret hold the chairs for the old bag contingent. Not to be rude or anything, but who the hell did the makeup here? Signoret's forehead looks like the walls of my living room and Vivian is either having a really bad hair day or that's a wig that needs to be fed. If Vivian and Simone don't care what they look like that's their business, but that pitcher's mound on Simone's head is distracting me. It's just all caked right there. I'm missing speeches (thank you) because I can't take my focus away from Simone's forehead.

Another odd thing (and I have no train of thought going right now) is that it appears that Kramer wanted to load up the cast with stars so it will have a Grand Hotel feel. Maybe if this was 1904. Fatty Arbuckle wasn't available? Where's Edwin Booth? This might have been Simones first talkie and in all honesty, I thought Vivian was dead at this point. Now I'm really torn over whether or not that's a wig.

Oh joy, I forgot Oskar Werner was in this. He's the ship doctor who ends up having a love affair with the heavily made up and just plain heavy Simone Signoret. I'm biased here: I think Werner's a lazy, no-talent slug. He plays the same colorless, bland, pseudo-brooding, pseudo-European in every movie and for some bizarre reason he actually was nominated for an Oscar for this. I didn't get it then. I don't get it now. There is also the Mexican migrant workers who are all stuffed in the bottom of the ship (they represent the oppressed underclass). The workers eventually have a riot which leads to the only action scene in the movie. Actually, most of the scenes I really enjoy involve these nameless poor folks.

The entire movie just shifts from a conversation involving two of the above to another conversation involving two of the above with the occasional appearance by George Segal and some woman as his lover (they represent the young lovers of the group). During all this, someone falls off the boat and dies (I didn't see who it was) and a couple of more people die, some other people get yelled at and they reach Germany. For some reason I keep thinking if Telly Savalas was in this it would be better.

Here we go. They're getting off the boat. And even this is taking forever. Some cute blonde just slapped Ferrer; the lovers are back together; and they are pulling a coffin off the boat while everyone looks depressed. I don't remember who's in the coffin, but by the looks and the age of most of this cast, it could have been anyone. Hopefully it was Kramer for making me sit through this.

Then at the end (go screw, I had to watch it, and now I'm giving away the ending) Michael Dunn said, "Now you may ask what this has to do with you? Nothing." Yeah, no kidding. There's room for you in that casket too, little man.