It’s 1933. A passenger liner takes off from Vera Cruz in Mexico on a month-long trip to Bremerhaven in Germany and a dwarf on the ship (Michael Dunn, at left) talks directly to the camera about it being a ship of fools, wondering if we might recognize anyone on board. We get to know a large cast of characters. The German captain is fond of the young ship's doctor (Oskar Werner) who has a weak heart and who, despite his blond good looks, seems inexperienced in love; this is his last trip on the ship and the captain encourages him to live it up. Jose Ferrer is a loud, antisemitic German publisher who dallies with a young good-time girl and makes obnoxious proclamations about race at the Captain's dining table. An insecure and struggling young artist (George Segal) is traveling with his mistress (Elizabeth Ashley), also an artist, though they are bunked in separate cabins and seem anxious to see if a month of not having sex will strengthen their tenuous bond—though talented, he's a bit hotheaded and produces political art that she doesn’t care for. A lonely but aloof middle-aged woman (Vivian Leigh) drinks and flirts without much success. Heinz Ruhmann, a German Jew, has been ejected by Ferrer from the Captain's table where most of the German passengers sit; he shares his exile table with Dunn and later with another German who makes the mistake of mentioning that his wife is Jewish. Lee Marvin is a washed-up baseball player who has regrets. There is also a wheelchair-bound evangelist and his weakling nephew who is getting tired of pushing him around and not having a life of his own. The ship stops in Cuba to pick up hundreds of Spanish workers who have no jobs after the sugar market collapses; they are pressed in tightly in steerage. Arriving with them is a countess (Simone Signoret), being deported after taking sides with labor agitators. She asks Werner for sleeping medicine, but he figures out she is an opium addict looking for a fix. However, the two slowly bond and have a tender relationship that becomes physical—she picks up a dry medical book from his shelves and reads from it, pretending it’s "Lady Chatterley’s Lover."
Other episodic setpieces involve a flamenco dancer (Jose Greco) and his largely female troupe, some of whom Greco pimps out to passengers. The evangelist's nephew falls for one of the dancers, then is disillusioned when she asks him for money before she lets him in her room. A rich couple insist on having their bulldog sit at the Captain's table at dinner; when two beastly children throw the dog overboard, a Spanish woodcarver from steerage (whom Segal has been chummy with) jumps over to save it, which he does at the cost of his own life, but the couple only care about the dog. Leigh leads an officer (Werner Klemperer) on but dismisses him, and he tells her she will end her years sitting at sidewalk cafes with a paid escort. A drunken Marvin comes on to her, but when he assumes she's a whore, she beats him and throws him out of her room. When Ruhmann seems not at all concerned about the status of Jews in Germany, Dunn berates him and he replies, "There are a million Jews in Germany—what are they going to do, kill all of us?" By the end, as they disembark in Germany, some stories are tied up, others are not, and the coming Nazi horrors are foreshadowed. Dunn turns to us again and corrects his opening remarks: "What has all this to do with us? Nothing."
Based on a novel by Katherine Anne Porter, drawn from an actual trip she took, this film is often criticized for being a puffed-up and overlong all-star vehicle (sort of true), or a Grand Hotel imitation set at sea (definitely true). At 150 minutes, it is certainly too long by almost a half an hour, but its length does give the various characters and stories room to breathe, with Signoret, Werner and Leigh given the most focus—those three also give the best performances, though most everyone is good. Michael Dunn, who got an Oscar nomination, is especially fine and deserved more screen time; because he functions as a kind of Greek chorus, his character is the only one that is never fleshed out. Segal and Ashley, early in their careers, are sexy and charismatic. Charles de Vries is good in a one-note but effective performance as the nephew. Leigh, in her last screen performance, feels a bit artificial at times, like she's giving us a reheated version of Blanche DuBois, but that is sort of what the character calls for. She has a moment near the end where she slips in a Scarlett O’Hara simper that is perfection. Signoret and Werner (pictured at right) give well-measured performances that could have tipped over into overdone sentimentality, but they never do. The blustery Ferrer strikes the only false note. The ship sets look real enough; it's obvious that it was all shot in a studio with ocean backgrounds, but that's not bothersome in this melodrama. Stanley Kramer directed in widescreen black & white and you really don’t miss the color. Set aside an afternoon for this, overlong but not painfully so. [TCM]