Ship of Fools

Ship of Fools (1965) is an American drama directed by Stanley Kramer that you can watch online on iFILM. Based on Katherine Anne Porter's novel, the film charts a transatlantic voyage from Veracruz to Bremerhaven in 1933 aboard the German liner Vera, with a passenger list that reads like a cross-section of a civilization about to fracture.

The cast is extraordinary: Oskar Werner as the ship's doctor falling for a political exile played by Simone Signoret; Vivien Leigh as a fading aristocrat whose bitterness surfaces in quiet, cutting moments; Lee Marvin as a washed-up baseball player hunting for oblivion in a bottle; George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley as two Americans who can't decide whether to love or leave each other. Tying them all together is Glocken, a philosophical dwarf played by Michael Dunn, who gives the ship its name and serves as the film's sardonic conscience.

Kramer won eight Oscar nominations for the picture — cinematographer Ernest Laszlo took the award home. As an ensemble study of denial and prejudice at the edge of catastrophe, it has aged into something harder and more specific than it seemed in 1965. Stream Ship of Fools online on iFILM.