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Ship of Fools
Director Stanley Kramer (The Defiant Ones, Judgment at Nuremburg, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) provided one of his most forgotten and underrated works in 1965's Ship of Fools, an adult shipboard drama rich with romance and bigotry and a lot more substance than we expect.
Based on a novel by Katherine Ann Porter, it's 1933 and a ship is leaving Mexico and traveling to Germany and our guide for the journey, a dwarf named Glocken (Michael Dunn), speaks directly to the camera and assures us that we're likely to meet someone like ourselves during this journey. Among the stories that unfold are the slow burn romance between the ship's doctor (Oskar Werner) and a Spanish Countess (Simone Signoret) who are both harboring secrets; Mary Treadwell (Vivien Leigh) is an aging femme fatale who is looking for male attention, any male, preferably someone younger; A bigoted German newspaper publisher (Jose Ferrer) who wants all blacks and Jews shipped off to an island somewhere; Tenny (Lee Marvin) is an ex-baseball player bitter about the end of his career and wants to drink and hump his way through this cruise; Jenny (Elizabeth Ashley) is a trust fund baby in love with an arrogant artist (George Segal) with whom she's afraid she has nothing in common with but sex. There's also a family of flamenco dancers on board where dad is pimping out his daughters and hundreds of Spanish immigrants have been picked up and are being stored in steerage
Uh. yeah, this is not your typical 1965 melodrama. Abby Mann's Oscar-winning adaptation of Porter's novel is multi-layered, not only offering a glance at the class system between 1st class and steerage, that anyone who saw Titanic is already aware of, but offers individual stories within that system that have a surprisingly adult slant for a 1965 movie. Was shocked when Jenny said she was looking forward to 26 days in separate cabins to see if they had something in common besides sex. I couldn't believe the beautiful young flamenco dancer who was willing to offer herself to a stranger for the bargain price of $40. It was shocking watching the tragic Mary Treadwell throw herself at any man who would look at her twice, but an encounter with Tenny climaxed with her beating the hell out of the guy.
There is an air of familiarity to some of what goes on here. Leigh's character, Mary Treadwell, is pretty much a retread of Blanche DuBois, who Leigh played in A Streetcar Named Desire, but this character doesn't try to sugar coat who she is the way Blanche did and Leigh completely invests in it. Watch that scene where she's in front of the makeup mirror...this woman is definitely not there. The back and forth between Jenny and David on the other hand, required complete attention because their relationship changed in every scene and we definitely know there is more going on with this countess than what initially surfaces. There are a couple of scenes that go on longer than they need to, especially the flamenco family's first dance, but a minor quibble.
In addition to Mann's Oscar for adapted screenplay the film received seven other nominations including Best Picture, Best Actor for Werner, Best Actress for Signoret, and Michael Dunn for Supporting Actor, though I could have seen a supporting nomination for Marvin as well, he stole every scene he was in. A supporting nod for Ashley wouldn't have been a terrible thing either. Sadly, this was also Vivien Leigh's final film role.
Director Stanley Kramer (The Defiant Ones, Judgment at Nuremburg, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner) provided one of his most forgotten and underrated works in 1965's Ship of Fools, an adult shipboard drama rich with romance and bigotry and a lot more substance than we expect.
Based on a novel by Katherine Ann Porter, it's 1933 and a ship is leaving Mexico and traveling to Germany and our guide for the journey, a dwarf named Glocken (Michael Dunn), speaks directly to the camera and assures us that we're likely to meet someone like ourselves during this journey. Among the stories that unfold are the slow burn romance between the ship's doctor (Oskar Werner) and a Spanish Countess (Simone Signoret) who are both harboring secrets; Mary Treadwell (Vivien Leigh) is an aging femme fatale who is looking for male attention, any male, preferably someone younger; A bigoted German newspaper publisher (Jose Ferrer) who wants all blacks and Jews shipped off to an island somewhere; Tenny (Lee Marvin) is an ex-baseball player bitter about the end of his career and wants to drink and hump his way through this cruise; Jenny (Elizabeth Ashley) is a trust fund baby in love with an arrogant artist (George Segal) with whom she's afraid she has nothing in common with but sex. There's also a family of flamenco dancers on board where dad is pimping out his daughters and hundreds of Spanish immigrants have been picked up and are being stored in steerage
Uh. yeah, this is not your typical 1965 melodrama. Abby Mann's Oscar-winning adaptation of Porter's novel is multi-layered, not only offering a glance at the class system between 1st class and steerage, that anyone who saw Titanic is already aware of, but offers individual stories within that system that have a surprisingly adult slant for a 1965 movie. Was shocked when Jenny said she was looking forward to 26 days in separate cabins to see if they had something in common besides sex. I couldn't believe the beautiful young flamenco dancer who was willing to offer herself to a stranger for the bargain price of $40. It was shocking watching the tragic Mary Treadwell throw herself at any man who would look at her twice, but an encounter with Tenny climaxed with her beating the hell out of the guy.
There is an air of familiarity to some of what goes on here. Leigh's character, Mary Treadwell, is pretty much a retread of Blanche DuBois, who Leigh played in A Streetcar Named Desire, but this character doesn't try to sugar coat who she is the way Blanche did and Leigh completely invests in it. Watch that scene where she's in front of the makeup mirror...this woman is definitely not there. The back and forth between Jenny and David on the other hand, required complete attention because their relationship changed in every scene and we definitely know there is more going on with this countess than what initially surfaces. There are a couple of scenes that go on longer than they need to, especially the flamenco family's first dance, but a minor quibble.
In addition to Mann's Oscar for adapted screenplay the film received seven other nominations including Best Picture, Best Actor for Werner, Best Actress for Signoret, and Michael Dunn for Supporting Actor, though I could have seen a supporting nomination for Marvin as well, he stole every scene he was in. A supporting nod for Ashley wouldn't have been a terrible thing either. Sadly, this was also Vivien Leigh's final film role.