Great Film overall

Film Perfection

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

This movie has some spectacular scenes but too much about it makes no sense.Why should the captain be so obcessed about making a record trip in a ship headed for the scrap heap? And all the things in the boiler room that were defective, no matter how old the ship was or what was its intended fate, passenger ships were carefully inspected before each voyage, No inspector would have failed to make sure something as critical as a steam gage or safety valve was working. That kind of thing was constantly checked.Nor would an engineer in charge have to worry about begging a higher up for taking action immediately.He would have immediately cut off the fuel oil supply to all boilers to reduce pressure until he had checked everything out.Nobody in this thing uses the least common sense.And as far as the woman trapped, the sensible thing,AGAIN" would be to round up some strong male passengers to help.get a heavy beam or oron bar to use as a lever, with something to use as shims to prevent the wall from falling back down as pressure was released.FIRST clearing all the depris out of the room so you could see what you were doing,you could have leavered the wall clear in a fraction of the time,far more quickly than bothering with the cutting torch,which could never have cleared things in the few minutes shown.At the time people regarded the trashing of the fine old liner as desecration to make this thing,It is a great pity that no one thought of preserving it as a hotel like the Queen Mary.

Quite good thriller, made independently but released by MGM, suggesting that writer-director Andrew Stone (and his wife Virginia, who edited, excellently) should be judged on the basis of more than "Song of Norway." Ship buffs will find it irresistible, as it offers a last look at the Ile de France, and sinks it, in the name of drama. It's a beautiful, stately liner, and Stone seems in able control of all the elements--the technical details, the drama, the scampering of terrified extras. Poor Dorothy Malone has to spend nearly the whole movie trapped in a dismantled stateroom, but she does a lot of acting with her face, and Robert Stack must have lost several pounds scrambling up and down decks as her panicked husband. There's also the pretty spectacular Woody Strode as the one crew member who doesn't ignore them, and good superciliousness from George Sanders, in Addison de Witt mode, as the captain. About the only technical error I can find is that the sky shots don't quite match--they're alternately sunny or gray depending on the day of the shoot. But it's a spectacular, creepy visualization of a calamity at sea, and it has more gravitas than the disaster movies that followed a decade or so later.

In their second teaming in 4 years (Ms. Malone & Mr. Stack had previously been paired on the WONDERFUL Douglas Sirk film WRITTEN ON THE WIND), Dorothy and Robert play husband and wife, traveling to Asia aboard the ill-fated S. S. Claridon ( a re-dressed Ile de France) along with their red-headed moppet.As fate would have it - the Claridon's boilers blow up - Ms. Malone's trapped by the rubble, and the ship's going down. Can Robert Stack save his wife? The big draw of this film was the actual destruction of the Ile de France as the S. S. Claridon. In this day and age, where we're so used to seeing things on huge scale being destroyed (the 'cousin' of THE LAST VOYAGE - TITANIC, was the first big budget film to rely HEAVILY on CGI for it's boat's destruction), it gives one a sense of the 'real,' knowing that while what your watching is staged - it IS REAL. This boat IS gonna go down (as is pointed out in the trivia area, after filming The France was re-floated and shipped off for scrap - sigh!).I'm a sucker for ANYTHING with Dorothy Malone. Any 'disaster' she's in - I'm there (I wish she was better acknowledged - especially given that Ms. Malone's STILL with us, thank goodness!). Given that this film is a 'disaster' flick before the Irwin Allen pictures of the early 70's (Earthquake,The Poseidon Adventure, et al.), this film is always a pleasure to watch, and given the large number of reviews posted the past day or so (it was just on TCM), I see I'm not alone.Grab the popcorn, and forget wearing a life-jacket - even though this ship's sinking - this film isn't.

I heard once that Andrew Stone and Alfred Hitchcock were friends. If so, I can just imagine those two gents sitting around during a long, rainy evening discussing ways of torturing an audience with suspense."The Last Voyage" cuts to the chase right away. Something happens on board the ocean liner "Claridon" and before you can sing "row, row, row your boat" the vessel is plunged into crisis. No soapy melodramas, bickering couples, singing nuns, etc. Just a good old-fashioned straightforward action flick. There are two stories. One involves the entirely myopic attempt by the captain (George Sanders) to save the ship and his reputation. He's the voice of authority in denial, prevalent in countless movies (where he's challenged by the pragmatic man-of-action). "Jaws" is a prime example.The other story concerns the entrapment of Robert Stack's wife in the film (Dorothy Malone) under a steel beam and his race to save her. Naturally, Stack soon finds himself at odds with the captain as he tries to get help to free his wife, and all kinds of obstacles get in his way. Meanwhile things are getting worse with the ship. The suspense keeps cranking tighter and tighter, as I breathlessly watch and try to convince myself that all will be well in the end - to no avail! Filming on a real ship is what really makes this movie work; in fact, the ship becomes a major character in the story. There's very little suspension of disbelief required. Stone keeps the story moving with dispatch and the ninety minutes fly by quickly. There are a few anomalies that I found problematic (where were the ship's medical staff, and how could the captain be SO intransigent), but these were diminished by the strong emotional elements and the movie's depiction of courage, devotion and loyalty, which were inspiring.I found Dorothy Malone to be particularly moving as the wife who, sensing a hopeless situation, just wants her husband and their kid to get themselves off the ship. It may be that, because I found her to be so sanely practical and REAL, that I kind of fell in love with her. She's the emotional centre of the film.