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 actual events concerning the fate of the ocean liner carrying Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba in 1939. It was based on a 1974 nonfiction book of the same title written by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts. The screenplay was written by Steve Shagan and David Butler. The film was produced by ITC Entertainment and released by Rank Film Distributors in the UK and Avco Embassy Pictures in the US. Plot Based on historic events, this dramatic film concerns the 1939 voyage of the German-flagged , which departed from Hamburg carrying 937 Jews from Germany, bound for Havana, Cuba. The passengers, having seen and suffered rising anti-Semitism in Germany, realized 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 Nazi propaganda, and that Germany had never 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 while the ship was on its way, and next 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, as Canada subsequently does; 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.