Ship of Fools

This 1965 film, produced and directed by Stanley Kramer,* and with an international cast, was nominated for a number of Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and it won two Academy Awards: for Best Art Direction, Black and White and for Best Cinematography, Black and White. It is a difficult picture to explain in an easy way, but you won't likely be on the edge of your seat waiting to see what will happen next. It's not that kind of story. The movie is based on a 1962 best selling book of the same name by Katherine Anne Porter, who took more than twenty years to write her book. She based her story on people she had met while on an ocean voyage she had taken from Mexico to Germany in 1931. Keep in mind, in 1931, many parts of the world were floundering around in the Great Depression, with the United States and Germany being especially hard hit. The Nazis had been gaining strength in German elections and, since Spain is involved in the book (and the movie), the Spanish king had abdicated and a "republic" had been declared in Spain; thus, there was lots of turmoil in the world. The movie changes the time of the voyage to 1933, when the Nazis had just taken power in Germany, but the worldwide economic depression continued and political tensions in Spain would lead to the Spanish Civil War.

"Ship of Fools" deals with several of the ship's passengers and how some of these people interact with other passengers, with the overall destination of the ship, Nazi Germany, and its potential for evil, hanging over the whole story. I've decided to deal with the movie by picking out a few of the characters and leaving things at that.

Mary Treadwell (played by Vivien Leigh, in her last movie), a recently divorced American, who is downcast about growing older and losing the beauty of her younger days. She tells how her former husband once struck her and how she then, "took every penny he had." The thing is, she has money, but no one to enjoy life with, she is lonely and bitter. After she tells one man how she envies, what she assumes to be, his near perfect marriage, the man says, "Nothing is perfect, Mrs. Treadwell." In real life, Vivien Leigh suffered with bipolar disorder (called manic depression, back then), and she had difficulty during the filming, verbally abusing some of the other cast members.

Bill Tenny (played by Lee Marvin), a former American baseball player from Texas who is downtrodden by his failure to be able to hit a curve ball over the outside corner of the plate; thus leading to his exit from professional baseball. One of the others tells him that for something that troubles his life so much, many people in the world wouldn't even know what "curve ball over the outside corner" means. ** Tenny tells his cabin mates how a Mexican immigration clerk had gotten offended because he called him, " 'Pancho,' you know, just being friendly like. You know, like back home we call a taxi driver 'Mack.' " As he proceeds with his story, he calls the Mexican clerk, "that little Nigger;" saying that he's been told that a lot of Mexicans have "mainly Nigger blood in them." Later, when seated for lunch with Mrs. Treadwell, Tenny asks her what the Nazis have against the Jews. He tells her, "Back home (in Texas) we don't have anything against the Jews. Hell, I never even saw a Jew until I was fifteen." In a great retort, she says, "Maybe you were too busy lynching Negroes to take time out for the Jews." Tenny's mouth drops open.  

Siegfried Rieber (played by José Ferrer), a Nazi and hater of those seen by him as being different. He tells others during dinner, "We must expunge foreign influences from Germany," and when asked what he means by "foreign influences," Rieber looks directly over at a table with a solitary man, Lowenthal (see Julius Lowental, below). Rieber talks of the need for "the extermination of all the  'unfit:' " useless children with birth defects, the old, Jews, mixed race people and whites who have committed serious crimes, but all of this is to be done "painlessly, of course," as if that makes mass murder reassuring. The ship's captain then asks, "Who will be left?" Rieber wears striped pajamas, very much like the clothing of Nazi concentration camp inmates, but he is the prisoner of his own hatred.

La Contesa (played by Simone Signoret, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress), a countess with drug addiction problems on her way to a Spanish prison. Her addiction and her destination surround her with the air of doom, but she receives some consoling affection from the ship's doctor (see below) in some of the great scenes of the film.

American couple David and Jenny (played by George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley), both artists, with David unhappy with his inability to earn enough money from being an artist, even having to rely on Jenny for money at times. His depressed state of mind leads the young couple to often quarrel. Jenny wonders if the two have anything going for them, beyond sex.  

Karl Glocken (played by Michael Dunn), a cigar smoking dwarf who also introduces and ends the film. He is, in many ways, tied to fellow passenger, Herr Lowenthal (see below).

Julius Lowenthal (played by Heinz Rühmann), a German Jew and dealer in religious jewelry. Excluded by the others to sit at the main table, he eats his dinner alone at a separate table, but he is then joined by Glocken, the dwarf. Lowenthal asks Glocken, "Are you Jewish?" And he tells Lowenthal, "I have my own minority group." The two become "comrades in exclusion." Lowenthal accepts his exclusion, and Glocken comments that Jews have 2000 years of suffering behind them. Later, another German passenger, Freytag (played by Swedish actor Alf Kjellin), joins the two, as he has now been excluded from the main table, because it is found out that his wife is Jewish. He goes to the main table and tells them, "I saw some of you praying in the chapel this morning, pretending you are good people, but you can't even exist without your prejudices. You don't even recognize what you are." Lowenthal must share a room with Nazi Rieber, who abruptly sweeps Lowenthal's shaving materials and toiletries from the sink. Lowenthal divides the space on the sink between the two of them. When Rieber tells Lowenthal that the Jews are the misfortune of Germans, he responds, "Yes, the Jews and bicycle riders." Rieber says, "Why bicycle riders?" Lowenthal answers with his own question, "Why the Jews?" 

Dr. Willi Schumann (played by Oskar Werner, who was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor), the ship's philosophical doctor. He sees injustice and he wants to remedy it, but he's disillusioned by life. When the ship takes on hundreds of Spanish farm workers in Cuba, they are forced to live in terrible conditions, although Schumann tries to help them. He's the antithesis to the Nazis, but with his disillusionment and his own medical condition (serious heart problem), can he last? He helps La Contesa, but she also helps him, a man who could die at any moment, but even if he lives, he is heading home to Germany, a country now in the hands of people he loathes.

* Stanley Kramer is known for a number of films, two of my favorites being, "Judgment at Nuremberg" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner."

** In the 1930s, baseball and its terminology was heavily American, not yet spread to many other parts of the world. 

Photo is from the 2003 Mill Creek Entertainment DVD

WORD HISTORY:

Fool/Foolish-This word, believe it or not, is distantly related to "belly" and to "bellows" (device for squeezing air out with force, often associated with a forge), both from the Germanic derived form from Indo European. "Fool" goes back to Indo European "bhel/bhelg," which meant, "to swell." This gave Latin "follis," as the Latin form used the "f" sound, instead of "b," and meaning, "bellows, air filled bag." From this meaning also came the notion of, "head filled with air;" thus, "stupid, silly person." Old French, a Latin-based language, had "fol," meaning, "madman" ("folle"="madwoman"), also used as an adjective for "mad," and the less severe, "silly" (modern French "fou"). English borrowed the word in the early 1200s as "fol." The verb form came along about a hundred years later with the meaning, "to cheat or trick someone;" that is, "make a fool of someone," but also, used of jesters, "to act like a fool." "Foolish," meaning, "lacking in good judgment," also developed in the 1300s. The "ish" ending, originally "isc" in Old English (also the same spelling in Old High German), is from a common Germanic suffix used for adjectives, and close English relatives, German, Low German and Dutch have "isch" (the spelling "isch" was also used by some in English). This Germanic form also influenced the "esque" of French and the "esco" of Italian by way of Lombardic (also called "Langobardic"), a Germanic language now extinct. The French form "may" have been reinforced by Frankish, the Germanic language of the Franks, who conquered Gaul and much of western Europe.