Rating: 
Summary: A masterpiece of parallell protrayal
Review: "Ship of Fools" is not a complicated tale. The characters are broad, there is no real "plot", and the lines are simple and concise. But this is easily one of the greatest films in history. Oskar Werner's acting is magnificent (as always), and Simone Signoret keeps up with great subtlety. Vivien Leigh, the eternal Southern belle, delivers a strong performance, exploiting to the maximum her aging features and low, stale voice. José Ferrer is perfect as the gifted (he sings a varieté song in good, authoriative German, with ease and grace) but totally irresponsible and prejudiced Nazi sympathiser. Much of the film's impact owes to our knowledge of history, of the indescribable horrors of World War II - the setting is a cruise ship carrying a cross section of pre-war European society, with a refreshing but unsettling American presence in Lee Marvin. This film is a must-see, if only for the unsurpassed performance of Oskar Werner, whose pronunciation of the English language may be difficult to follow at first, but whose voice and obvious ear for nuances bring to light this language's expressive possibilities like few others. He was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor, but got the New York Film Critics' Award instead - which strengthens even more the opinion that this is a landmark in interpretation! Werner was one of the greatest stage actors of the 20th century, and he chose his films with great care. Superb cast, superb direction!
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece of parallell protrayal
Review: "Ship of Fools" is not a complicated tale. The characters are broad, there is no real "plot", and the lines are simple and concise. But this is easily one of the greatest films in history. Oskar Werner's acting is magnificent (as always), and Simone Signoret keeps up with great subtlety. Vivien Leigh, the eternal Southern belle, delivers a strong performance, exploiting to the maximum her aging features and low, stale voice. José Ferrer is perfect as the gifted (he sings a varieté song in good, authoriative German, with ease and grace) but totally irresponsible and prejudiced Nazi sympathiser. Much of the film's impact owes to our knowledge of history, of the indescribable horrors of World War II - the setting is a cruise ship carrying a cross section of pre-war European society, with a refreshing but unsettling American presence in Lee Marvin. This film is a must-see, if only for the unsurpassed performance of Oskar Werner, whose pronunciation of the English language may be difficult to follow at first, but whose voice and obvious ear for nuances bring to light this language's expressive possibilities like few others. He was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor, but got the New York Film Critics' Award instead - which strengthens even more the opinion that this is a landmark in interpretation! Werner was one of the greatest stage actors of the 20th century, and he chose his films with great care. Superb cast, superb direction!
Rating: 
Summary: Not only an insult...
Review: ...but a crookery as well. When will governments start restricting legal protection against piracy, and grant it ONLY to the studios showing some respect for intellectual/artistic property AND customers, who are entitled to get the FULL IMAGE and not the FOOL SCREEN????? The stars, of course, are not for the movie itself which deserves 5, but for the studio's crap. Even for free I wouldn't take it....Once again, offering full-screen as an option is understandable, but not presenting the original aspect ratio is more than unforgivable.
Rating:
Summary: DVD VERSION NOT IN WIDESCREEN
Review: A socially conscious would-be epic, from back in the days When Art Mattered. The story takes place on a German ocean liner in the early 1930s, travelling from Mexico back to Der Fatherland, with an all-star cast of Spaniards, Americans, Jews, drunks, dwarves, exiles, tortured artists and Germans -- both good and bad -- all sailing towards their date with Destiny. Honestly, I could only force myself to watch about two-thirds of the way through, and then I had to admit I was stone cold bored, and besides, the rental was already one day overdue and it was getting close to closing time. This isn't a bad movie, but its earnest, over-serious style of presentation felt very dated, and I could see where the plot was headed from a mile away. Some fine character actors, but kind of a lumpy script.
Rating: 
Summary: +1/2. Over-obvious and overlong
Review: A socially conscious would-be epic, from back in the days When Art Mattered. The story takes place on a German ocean liner in the early 1930s, travelling from Mexico back to Der Fatherland, with an all-star cast of Spaniards, Americans, Jews, drunks, dwarves, exiles, tortured artists and Germans -- both good and bad -- all sailing towards their date with Destiny. Honestly, I could only force myself to watch about two-thirds of the way through, and then I had to admit I was stone cold bored, and besides, the rental was already one day overdue and it was getting close to closing time. This isn't a bad movie, but its earnest, over-serious style of presentation felt very dated, and I could see where the plot was headed from a mile away. Some fine character actors, but kind of a lumpy script.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter novel
Review: A stunning, powerful examination of how racism and xenophopia, if unchecked, can overtake society, Ship of Fools is set aboard a German liner sailing from Mexico to Bemerhaven just after the Nazis have taken over. Among the passengers are Vivien Leigh as an embittered divorcee, Lee Marvin as a down-on-his-luck baseball player, George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley as an artist and his lover, Jose Ferrer as a vociferous anti-Semite, Simone Signoret as a Contessa having an affair with ship's doctor Oskar Werner, and Michael Dunn as Greek Chorus. With few exceptions, the entire cast is terrific. Leigh, in her last film, seemingly assimilated all the heartache of her life into this role, and her Charleston near the end is a highlight. The standouts, in my opinion, are Signoret and Werner; they inject their love affair, obviously doomed from the start, with an emotionalism that is genuinely heartbreaking. Ship of Fools is undeniably Stanley Kramer's finest hour as a director, though, ironically, he was passed over for an Oscar nomination, despite a Best Picture nomination. Ship of Fools is required viewing, particularly for those wanting to find some reason for World War II and the Holocaust.
Rating:
Summary: This ain't no "Love Boat"
Review: And now a word about the strengths of this classic film, amidst all the grousing about the weaknesses of its direction and the DVD not containing a full screen version. Ahem.
"Ship of Fools" is listed on the NY Times' "1000 best films of all time," and for good reason. As someone who was a child when this film was released, and only now getting around to seeing it for myself, there are a great number of excellent things to enjoy about this truly great movie, many of them centering on the portrayals of the many vivid characters. Vivien Leigh is riveting as the embittered middle-aged wealthy divorcee who lies about her age, only for the sake of her own vanity. Oskar Werner, an actor little known to me, plays the ship's doctor with brilliant understatement until he comes unraveled toward the end of the story. He and Simone Signoret, who play illicit lovers, were nominated for Best Actor and Actress Oscars. And it's great fun to see unexpectedly terrific work by a couple of actors I mainly knew from TV series (Michael Dunn, the dwarf, nominated here for a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar, who played Miguelito Loveless on TV's "The Wild, Wild West" and Werner Klemper, famous for Colonel Klink of "Hogan's Heroes").
The story itself is quite ironic and worth savoring as well. The titular ship is a cruise ship from Germany, and while there is romance and sex on board as one might expect (perhaps more so than one might expect from a film of this era), the main course is political. Jose Ferrer as a top Nazi writer, George Segal as a Communist/Socialist artist, and Heinz Ruhmann as a capitalist German Jew who still laments the Kaiser's passing and believes the Nazis are a passing fad ("There are over six million Jews in Germany. What're they going to do, kill all of us?").
I'd like to ultimately give the film 4-1/2 stars, as somehow all of these wonderful parts don't add up to a completely wonderful whole, but close enough. Certainly there is a heavy-handedness and overplay to some of the film's moments, and at times it does come off as a dramatic, 1965 version of "The Love Boat" that takes place in late 1932 or early 1933. Ultimately, however, there are so many terrific performances and memorable story lines, which seem to neither drag on too long nor leave us hanging on for more. That balance is very difficult to achieve in a film with such a large cast, so ultimately this film certainly deserves its status as a classic. I didn't even mention other worthy work by Lee Marvin, Elizabeth Ashley, and others, but I certainly could.
And as for the "widescreen vs full screen" issue, the film is a character study that takes place entirely on a ship. The full screen is enough to hold that, although I agree I would like to see it in widescreen if/when available. It's not a film where the trimming is distracting, at least as far as I noticed, as it would be with something like "Lawrence of Arabia."
Rating: 
Summary: "Tell them I have to fix the toilet"
Review: First of all, I must say that this is an outstanding adaptation of an excellent satirical novel. Some characters were modified, perhaps for the better: the minor hunchback character is now a good-looking dwarf with significant observational powers, sort of a Greek chorus in miniature, while the ill-tempered Jewish merchant is now an all-too-ironic benevolent and patriotic German who believes that the (believe it or not, Amazon censored this word) are a passing fad. Kudos especially to Jose Ferrer for his brilliantly obnoxious role as the anti-Jew who's not an anti-Semite - he loves the Arabs. Sweet stuff. Indeed, all of the characters have something so contribute, to the point that the opulence of the movie is nearly overwhelming.Yes, Kramer had a tendency to overdo everything he touched. Nonetheless, I strongly feel that this movie is not as dated as some people seem to feel. It is a candid snapshot of a cultural mileau that reflects not only a specific period of time, but the human condition in general. Soapy, ironic, moving, and pointed at times, there are lessons for all of us.
Rating:
Summary: "Tell them I have to fix the toilet"
Review: First of all, I must say that this is an outstanding adaptation of an excellent satirical novel. Some characters were modified, perhaps for the better: the minor hunchback character is now a good-looking dwarf with significant observational powers, sort of a Greek chorus in miniature, while the ill-tempered Jewish merchant is now an all-too-ironic benevolent and patriotic German who believes that the (...) are a passing fad. Kudos especially to Jose Ferrer for his brilliantly obnoxious role as the anti-Jew who's not an anti-Semite - he loves the Arabs. Sweet stuff. Indeed, all of the characters have something so contribute, to the point that the opulence of the movie is nearly overwhelming. Yes, Kramer had a tendency to overdo everything he touched. Nonetheless, I strongly feel that this movie is not as dated as some people seem to feel. It is a candid snapshot of a cultural mileau that reflects not only a specific period of time, but the human condition in general. Soapy, ironic, moving, and pointed at times, there are lessons for all of us. (...)
Rating:
Summary: A blue ribbon film with excellent character portrayals
Review: Given its setting of sundry characters en route to Germany from Mexico, this film could have easily degenerated into something predictable, mawkish and trite. Instead, it is a truly fabulous cinematic work, with flesh-and-blood characers whose various predicaments, interwoven against the burgeoning Nazi sentiment of the early 1930s, grab the viewer from the very start. As Glocken, the "little person" who delivers a welcoming narrative, said: there's a ball player, a doctor, dog lovers, emancipated ladies and others whose assorted problems unravel themselves and somehow get resolved through the weeks of the sea journey. Simone Signoret and Oskar Werner deliver bravura performances as doomed lovers, while middle-aged disillusioned socialite Vivien Leigh turns in a wonderfully tart portrayal of a closet romantic hidden beneath a sarcastic facade. Lee Marvin is also good as a rough, contemptible athlete whose unmannerly words and actions manage to alienate just about everone on board. The film's theme music, while limited to a few scenes, is also hauntingly poignant. Don't miss this one!
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