DL, I never hear anything about Ship of Fools on here

I tried to watch it again not too long ago. The pace was so slow and since I knew it was ultimately a depressing movie, I turned it off.

Vivien Leigh is embarrassingly bad in it...

If you think it’s slow and depressing (which it is) don’t even try Voyage of the Damned, R1.

Speaking of Voyage of the Damned, below is a link up a thread about it. There has been discussion of Ship of Fools in the context of other threads such as those on Voyage of the Damned, Oskar Werner and Vivien Leigh.

Vivien Leigh looks so scary in it. You would never guess from it she was once considered the most beautiful woman in film.

Vivien Leigh's final movie, following years of struggle with mental illness.

Oh, fiddle, dee-dee, you frumpy cow, @ R2.

Leigh’s crazy ass Charleston in it is everything.

There was a making of documentary on YouTube, but it seems to have been deleted. Elizabeth Ashley said Leigh was in really bad shape, which is also confirmed in a biography I read last year called “Dark Star.” Highly recommend the book for Leigh fans.

Ashley said the scene on the deck was pushed back a day and the sunglasses Leigh wears were “there for good reason.” Sounds like she went on a bender which she had a tendency to do during a manic phase.

She lit Lee Marvin up with that shoe!

It’s not in color-thought it was in color.

Roman Spring is in color.

The Roman spring of whom, R11?

The BOOK on which it's based, by Katherine Anne Porter, is really pretty impressive so I don't know why anyone would bother with the movie which is, by all accounts, bad.

I liked it.

Also, Elizabeth Ashley's book ACTRESS is a good read.

The costuming, hair and makeup are horrendous. No attempt was made to give it a late 1930s authenticity. And it's not as though there was no research available for Vivien Leigh in that period.

R13, why did you do all caps for “book”?

It's in my middle sister's and my Top 5 favorite films of all time. Since first seeing it in '77 or so, we've each seen it probably 50 times; we know every word of dialog.

Perfect casting: Oskar Werner, Simone Signoret, and Michael Dunn are utterly heartbreaking; Elizabeth Ashley never looked more luscious and dewy. At age 13 I developed a lifelong crush on George Segal because of this film. Vivien Leigh is perfection as the bitter, brittle divorcee whose loneliness is deeper and colder than the Mariana Trench; I love her interactions with the boorish Lee Marvin, who is incredible as the "I'm not a racist" racist, horny former pro baseball player--his stricken face when Leigh throws his racism in his face? Unforgettable and DEAD-ON; I have seen that exact face and sharp "Who, MEEEEEE???" intake of breath in soooo many racists-in-denial I have encountered in my life. And Oh my God, Jose Ferrer as the Nazi's Nazi--wow. I'm a huge Stanley Adams fan, and here he is memorable as always, in a smallish but pivotal role. The avaricious Spanish dancers who do NOTHING for free are a hoot to watch.

And through all the human stories winds the ominous thread of imminent death and destruction of entire countries and millions of people.

I LOVE this film today just as much as I did at age 13.

I've tried to watch it several times and can't get into it.

The Werner/Signoret scenes make it worth watching—but seem to belong to another, much better movie.

I wonder if people take it too seriously r17. Not the subject matter but the interactions.

The only good padts are the scenes with Simone Signoret and Oskar Werner. The rest of the movie is a bore. And there is zero attempt to recreate the 1930s.

Musical version with Bea Arthur was superior.

R17 Why do you and your sister like it so much? Do you like the book?

R22 Seriously?

Did you love their pad Thai?

Katherine Anne Porter wrote a couple of my all-time favorite short stories, but I was disappointed with her one and only novel, the sort of historical fiction a critic once said was written with "impeccable hindsight" (alongside portentous foreshadowing and heavy symbolism, also evident in the movie). Still, I'm happy for her that the book was a surprise bestseller, and that the profits from it and the lucrative movie deal (supposedly $500,000, which Wikipedia says is "$5,197,470 adjusted for inflation") kept her financially sound until she died in 1980 at age 90.

Why do you suppose there was so little attempt at historical reality visually in the design of the film? Do you think it was willful, perhaps in making the film more "relevant" to 1965 audiences, or do you think they thought they were presenting an accurate picture of 1933?

I realize most historical films in the 60s and before then weren't much better, but because Ship of Fools is very much about that period in time, it's just so unfortunate. Probably if the film had been shot in color it would even be more jarring.

I would love to see it remade, perhaps as a short mini-series. Another I would also love to see redone is 'Rain'; the Joan Crawford 1932 version. I loves me KAP and W. Somerset Maugham .

I enjoyed seeing the bulldog seated at the dining table.

I also saw it in the movie theatre at age 13 or so...

It seemed very grown up, I didn't really understand it, but it created a strong impression.

So, are each of the characters supposed to be taken as metaphors for the countries they're from as WWII approaches, represented as expressing the attitude of those countries towards Hitler and Nazism?