movie voyage of the damned

Voyage Of The Damned

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Brief Synopsis

Cast & crew, stuart rosenberg, frederick jaeger, luther adler, victor spinetti, julie harris, technical specs.

In 1939, the MS St. Louis ocean liner set sail from Germany to Cuba. Carrying Jewish refugees, the vessel met a tragic fate.

James Mason

Donald houston, milo sperber, sam wanamaker, michael constantine.

Wendy Hiller

Oskar werner.

Janet Suzman

Faye Dunaway

Della mcdermott, gunter meisner, brian gilbert.

Katharine Ross

Malcolm mcdowell, ina skriver.

Orson Welles

Carl duering, leonard rossiter.

Max Von Sydow

Adele strong, georgina hale, constantin de goguel, laura gemser.

Jose Ferrer

Maria Schell

Lynne frederick.

Denholm Elliott

Nehemiah Persoff

David De Keyser

Marika rivera, robin halstead.

Helmut Griem

Ben Gazzara

Fernando Rey

Genevieve west, bernard hepton, anthony higgins, bernard kaye.

Jonathan Pryce

Don henderson, philip stone, keith barron, garry mcdermott, betty adamson, eric allwright, john billing, david butler, gerry crampton, phyllis dalton, robert fryer, joseph haydn, auguste heinrich hoffmann, edward lockton, glenn miller, max morgan-witts, tom priestley, cliff robinson, lalo schifrin, steve shagan, wilfred shingleton, rudolph siecynski, jack stephens, gordon thomas, david tringham, billy williams, award nominations, best supporting actress, best writing, screenplay, voyage of the damned.

Wendy Hiller, 1912-2003

Miscellaneous notes.

Released in United States Winter January 1, 1976

Re-released in United States on Video January 5, 1994

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Produced by, voyage of the damned (1976), directed by stuart rosenberg.

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Synopsis by Hal Erickson

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Voyage of the Damned

• 31   Metascore
• 2 hr 35 mins

An international cast headlines this fact-based story about German Jews seeking refuge in 1939 Cuba. Faye Dunaway, Max Von Sydow, Oskar Werner, Malcolm McDowell, Orson Welles, James Mason, Lee Grant, Ben Gazzara, Katharine Ross. Weiler: Luther Adler. Clasing: Michael Constantine. Canaris: Denholm Elliott. Miguel: Jose Ferrer. Alice: Julie Harris. Anna: Lynne Frederick. Stuart Rosenberg directed.

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• 1977 - Golden Globe - Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture - nominated
• 1977 - Golden Globe - Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture - nominated
• 1977 - Golden Globe - Best Screenplay - Motion Picture - nominated
• 1977 - Golden Globe - Best Motion Picture - Drama - nominated

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Faye Dunaway

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A luxury liner carries Jewish refugees from Hitler's Germany in a desperate fight for survival.

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The Screen: 'Voyage of the Damned'

By Vincent Canby

• Dec. 23, 1976

In May 1939 the Hamburg-America liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg headed for Havana, carrying 937 Jews who had paid Hitler's government dearly in the hope of finding refuge from the Nazis in Cuba. Hitler's strategy was simple: if, indeed, the Cuban Government accepted the refugees (and there was doubt about that, even when they sailed), then Germany was well rid of them and a little bit richer, too.If Cuba did not accept them, and if the United States and other countries followed suit, then Hitler would have proven his point that Jews were unwanted by the very countries that were so loudly criticizing his anti-Semitic policies while proclaiming their own humanitarian principles.The story of that voyage is a harrowing footnote to the history of World War II. As carefully researched by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts in their book "The Voyage of the Damned," it is, further, a revealing commentary on how opportunism could dictate policies of friendly governments, including that of the United States.It also seems to be excellent source material for a film, though you'd never know it from the alternately sluggish and hysterical movie that opened at three New York theaters yesterday. Stuart Rosenberg, the director, and Steven Shagan and David Butler, who wrote the screenplay, appear to have been attracted to the project because of the almost limitless ways in which they could make history look like a bad, all-star movie, to start with, they use a dozen or so too many stories even to fit conveniently into a running time inflated to 158 minutes.Their touch is so surely banal that they turn potentially moving episodes into second-rate melodrama, while adding some third-rate melodramatics of their own, including a Romeo-and-Juliet suicide pact. It's the kind of movie in which someone says, quite seriously, "Vee Chermans har hallvays hon time" (We Germans are always on time).The cast includes good actors and bad, but even the good actors are inclined to be awful. Faye Dunaway and Oskar Werner are all right as a rather posh Berlin doctor and his wife who are carrying their marital problems into exile intact. They travel first-class. Malcolm McDowell plays the role of a cabin boy who appears to be old enough to qualify for Social Security. When we weren't looking, his youth fled. Max von Sydow survives with his reputation undamaged as the liner's humane skipper, but Katharine Ross, who looks like a Rose Bowl parade queen, is a joke as a humane Havana whore.Orson Welles, James Mason, Denholm Elliott and Jose Ferrer are on and off faster than it takes to type this sentence, while Lee Grant, Julie Harris, Wendy Hiller and Luther Adler might wish they had been so lucky.Movies as clumsy, tasteless and self-righteous as this are worse than merely boring. By exploiting the tragedies of real people, some wildly fictionalized, "The Voyage of the Damned" attempts to turn them to profit without giving them any measure of the respect that is due."Voyage of The Damned," which has been rated PG ("parental guidance suggested", contains nothing of an even mildly suggestive nature except the title, which might mislead children to think they are about to see a disaster film—and a child who wants to see a disaster film and sees this, instead, will be an angry child.

VOYAGE OF THE DAMNED, directed by Stuart Rosenberg; screenplay by Steve Shagan and David Butler, based on the book by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts; produced by Robert Fryer; director of photography, Billy Williams; music, Lalo Schifrin; editor, Tom Priestly; an ITC Entertainment Film production, distributed by Avco Embassy Pictures. Running time: 158 minutes. At Loews Astor Plaza Theater, 44th Street west of Broadway; Loews Cine Theater, Third Avenue near 86th Street and Reade's 34th Street East Theater, near Second Avenue. This film has been rated PG.Denise Kreisler . . . . . Faye DunawayCapt. Schroeder . . . . . Max Von SydowDr. Kreisler . . . . . Oskar WernerMax Gunter . . . . . Malcolm McDowellEstedes . . . . . Orson WellesRemos . . . . . James MasonLilian Rosen . . . . . Lee GrantMorris Troper . . . . . Ben GazzaraMira Hauser . . . . . Katharine RossProf. Weiler . . . . . Luther AdlerClasing . . . . . Michael ConstantineAdm Canaris . . . . . Denholm ElliottBenitez . . . . . Jose FerrerAnna Rosen . . . . . Lynne FrederickSchiendick . . . . . Helmut GriemAlice Feinchild . . . . . Julie HarrisRebecca Weiler . . . . . Wendy HillerDr. Glauner . . . . . Donald HoustonAaron Pozner . . . . . Paul KosloMr. Hauser . . . . . Nehemiah PersoffPresident Bru . . . . . Fernando ReyCommander von Bonin . . . . . Leonard RossiterMrs. Hauser . . . . . Maria SchellDr. Max Strauss . . . . . Victor SpinettiLeni Strauss . . . . . Janet SuzmanCarl Rosen . . . . . Sam WanamakerJoseph Manasse . . . . . Jonathan Pryce

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Roberto Minervini's U.S. Civil War Film 'The Damned' Official Trailer

by Alex Billington May 15, 2024 Source: YouTube

"This land has it all." Time for a look at even more footage. Les Films du Losange has debuted the first full-length official trailer for The Damned , a French production made by an Italian filmmaker about America's Civil War in the 1860s. The film just premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, playing in the "Un Certain Regard" section . It's the latest narrative feature made by Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini, whose last film was a doc also set in America called What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire? . The Damned is set in the winter of 1862, during the Civil War. The U.S. Army (meaning the Union army) sends a volunteer company to patrol the uncharted Western territories. As their mission changes course, the meaning behind their engagement begins to elude them. The film stars Jeremiah Knupp , René W. Solomon , Cuyler Ballenger , Noah Carlson , Judah Carlson , and Tim Carlson . We posted the first teaser just a few days ago , but apparently that didn't get enough buzz so here comes a longer trailer. Still not sure about this one.

Here's the full-length trailer for Roberto Minervini's The Damned , direct from Losange's YouTube :

You can also rewatch the teaser trailer for Minervini's The Damned right here , for the first look again.

Winter of 1862. In the midst of the Civil War, the U.S. Army (Union) sends a company of volunteer soldiers to the western territories, with the task of patrolling the unchartered borderlands. As their mission ultimately changes course, the meaning behind their engagement begins to elude them... The Damned , also known as Les Damnés in French, is written and directed by the Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini , director of the feature films Low Tide and The Passage previously, and also the docs Stop The Pounding Heart , The Other Side , and What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire? . Produced by Paolo Benzi and Denise Ping Lee. This is premiering soon at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard section. No other release dates are set yet - stay tuned for updates after the fest. How's this footage? Still intrigued?

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‘The Damned’ Review: In His Latest Look at America’s Margins, Roberto Minervini Travels Back to the Civil War

The Italian-born director has lived in the United States for more than two decades, bringing the insights of an outsider to overlooked communities in his first period piece.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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Set during the Civil War, a long way from the front lines, Roberto Minervini ’s “ The Damned ” continues the Italian helmer’s career-long examination of the rifts and affinities between overlooked segments of American society. Apart from one long, destabilizing battle with an unseen adversary, the portrayal is a relatively peaceful one, following a group of Union soldiers assigned to scout the Northwestern frontier in 1862. While the country is divided, this assignment brings together men of different backgrounds, fostering camaraderie and mutual respect (surprisingly, the topic of slavery never comes up, though God factors into multiple conversations).

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With their full beards and blunt features, the men in Minervini’s cast look less like professional actors than the authentic Civil War soldiers seen in daguerreotypes of the time (especially Tim Carlson, of the family featured in “Stop the Pounding Heart,” as the Sergeant). Characters have a way of drifting in and out of Minervini’s films, and “The Damned” is no different, despite its more structured premise. A select group of troops travel to Montana, bonding among themselves for a time, before a run-in with Confederate snipers drastically reduces their ranks.

Minervini’s style has always blurred the lines between documentary and fiction, and here — in Civil War reenactment mode, as participants play themselves in period garb — he covers the ambush the way a war photographer might. DP Carlos Alfonso Corral, who shot Minervini’s striking black-and-white doc “What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?,” chases after the soldiers as they duck for cover and attempt to return fire. Hidden by distant bushes, the enemy remains unseen, which makes the conflict that much more disconcerting.

Does “The Damned” really qualify as a war film? At times, the low-key approach may remind viewers more of Kelly Reichardt’s Oregon Trail saga, “Meek’s Cutoff,” in that both films (set less than two decades and two states apart) provide an alternative to the conventional Hollywood Western. For instance, “The Damned” doesn’t even bother to identify the names of its characters, rejecting the 20th-century focus on the individual — where heroic characters might be played by John Wayne or Henry Fonda — in favor of a collective sea of faces.

That’s something so many war movies get wrong: When men enlist in the Army, they agree to put the cause ahead of themselves. It becomes their duty to accept orders, however counterintuitive, whereas in Hollywood movies (of the past 50 years, at least), authority is nearly always wrong, and success is only possible when someone steps out of line and does what’s right. In reality, such behavior would almost surely get the fanatic (and many of his comrades) killed.

In a challenge to America’s own mythology, Minervini dispenses with such tropes, while allowing his characters — including a fresh-faced teen known only as ”Young Soldier” (Judah Carlson) — space to reflect on their reasons for signing up. They question the existence of God, debate the ideas of good and evil, and try to make sense of their mounting disillusion. “The Damned” has a tendency to meander, but in so doing, it strives toward something authentic.

Reviewed at Wilshire Screening Room, May 6, 2024. In Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard). Running time: 88 MIN.

• Production: (Italy-U.S.-Belgium) An Okta Film, Pulpa Film production with Rai Cinema, in coproduction with Michigan Films, VOO OBE Be tv, Shelter Prod, in association with Stregonia, Moonduckling Films, with the support of MiC – Direzione Generale Cinema e audiovisivo, Centre du cinéma et de l’audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Fondo Audiovisivo Friuli Venezia-Giulia, Taxshelter.Be and ING, Tax shelter du Gouvernement féderal de Belgique, Film Commission Torino Piemonte, Federal tax credit program of Canada (Cavco), Provincial tax credit program of Québec, in collaboration with Kaibou Production. (International sales: Les Films du Losange, Paris.) Producers: Paolo Benzi, Denise Ping Lee, Roberto Minervini, Paolo Del Brocco. Executive producers: Teresa Mannino, Jean-Alexandre Luciani, Annette Fausboll. Co-producers: Alice Lemaire, Sébastien Andres.
• Crew: Director, writer: Roberto Minervini. Camera: Carlos Alfonso Corral. Editor: Marie-Hélène Dozo. Music: Carlos Alfonso Corral.
• With: Jeremiah Knupp, René W. Solomon, Cuyler Ballenger, Noah Carlson, Judah Carlson, Tim Carlson, Bill Gehring.

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‘The Damned' Review: An Immersive Civil War Drama That Whisks Us Into America's Troubled Past

Italian filmmaker Roberto Minervini's artfully crafted movies, which include such works as Stop the Pounding Heart , The Other Side and What You Gonna Do When the World's on Fire? , have always sat in a murky gray zone separating fiction from documentary.

Nonprofessional actors play themselves, or versions of themselves, in narratives that seem to have been crafted out of their own lives. And while the locations are always real places, with an emphasis on swaths of the American South - as his name suggests, Minervini is Italian, but he's lived in the U.S. since 2000 - the director transforms them into sublime backdrops for his gritty tales of poverty and abandon.

His latest film, The Damned , is not technically a documentary: It's set in 1862 at the height of the Civil War and follows a pack of Union soldiers treacherously exploring unmapped territories in the West. And yet, if it were possible to send a camera crew back into the past to capture such an event, the result would be something close to what Minervini delivers in this quietly intoxicating and existentially real war movie.

"Real" in the sense that there's not much action except for one long and deadly battle sequence, while the rest of the film mostly entails soldiers sitting around and killing time, which is what often happens in war. And real in that the cast consists of average men who look the part, especially dressed in those dark blue Union uniforms, but talk more or less like men talk today. So again, we're floating somewhere between reality and fiction, as if The Damned were a time capsule of the past that's been washed in the light of the present.

That light is certainly alluring, with cinematographer Carlos Alfonso Corral (who also composed the music) filming the troops in exquisite shallow-focus compositions where the breathtaking Montana backdrops are slightly blurred. The aesthetic brings to mind Terence Malick's The New World and Alejandro Iñarritu's The Revenant - both were shot by the great DP Emmanuel Lubezki - which combined historical realism with an enhanced naturalistic style, finding untold beauty in America's troubled and violent past.

In some ways, The Damned plays like a low-key, laconic version of those films, where weary men converse with one another about God, or more mundane things, as they wait for death to creep up out of nowhere and take them away. This happens about a half hour into the action, when the soldiers suddenly get ambushed in their encampment, resulting in a lengthy and mesmerizing rifle battle set during twilight. It may be one of the prettiest battle sequences in recent memory.

Who, exactly, is attacking the Union Army is never made clear, and Minervini seems less concerned with historical details than with capturing a certain state of loss and confusion among the troops. "We're killing other people, other Americans," one trooper complains to the others, reminding us - in the same vein as Alex Garland's Civil War , though much less bluntly - that we're currently living in a divided country.

Although there are no main characters for most of the story, the film eventually focuses on four soldiers who split off from the rest of the squad to scout a route through the mountains. Instead of perishing together in one final battle, they gradually drift away into the fog of a war they never manage to fully grasp, hoping that they're doing more good than evil, and that the Lord will deign to save them.

But as the title states, these soldiers may be damned from the get-go. When we cut back to the original camp at some point, there are only dead bodies left on the ground, in images reminiscent of Matthew Brady's stunning photographs of Civil War battlefields. Minervini leaves us feeling that, although the Union did of course win the war, their victory would lead America back to where it is now, on the brink of another major schism. As Faulkner famously wrote: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."  

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