THE LAST VOYAGE
A film review by Shane R. Burridge
Copyright 1996 Shane R. Burridge
(1960) 87m.
Gripping production by veteran writer-director Andrew L. Stone. A luxury liner takes in water and slowly sinks during an ocean cruise. Disaster-movie convention would have us expect the usual mob panic, cross-section of characters, and sweaty, tight-jawed troubleshooters. But Stone has seen all this before: instead, the calamity of the shipwreck is focused into one event - a passenger (Dorothy Malone) has her leg trapped under wreckage in her cabin. Throughout the film we watch, with mounting tension, as her husband (Robert Stack) tries to save her and their child (Tammy Marihugh, well directed in her role). It's a nifty twist on a familiar theme that only one passenger on a sinking ocean liner should be in any danger, but Stone wrings it for all it is worth. Ultimately the emotive scale of a disaster can still be measured with just one human life. You'll empathize with Stack as he struggles with a cumbersome oxygen tank, knowing that he is asking the impossible of himself to save his wife. As her death - i.e., her `last voyage' - becomes imminent, the story shifts attention to the survival of Stack and Marihugh, who are too distraught to leave her. At which point do the living acknowledge responsibility to continue on for the sake of the dying?
We don't have much time to dwell on this dilemma because Stone keeps events moving. Story is told from two perspectives, that of the family and those of the chief crew. George Sanders has played enough cads in his time to make us assume his Captain qualifies is the `villain' of the piece. But he really makes only one bad decision - he's willing to enlist the advice and skills of his crew and do everything he can to keep his passengers safe from that point on. Stone's direction is unhurried and functions without sensation - the flooding interiors of the ship are entirely believable, and the sinking of the ship is done with slow, steady, technical precision. Note also the use of natural sounds to heighten atmosphere - there's barely a note of music played. Only bad call is John Houseman's portentous voice-overs that appear every time we see the ship in long-shot. Presumably this was added to remind us that the liner was indeed sinking.
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