A woman comes on board
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | A woman comes on board |
| Original title | Passage Home |
| Country of production | Great Britain |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1955 |
| length | 102 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Roy Ward Baker |
| script | William Fairchild |
| production |
Julian Wintle Earl St. John |
| music | Clifton Parker |
| camera | Geoffrey Unsworth |
| cut | Sidney Hayers |
| occupation | |
| |
A woman comes on board (Original title: Passage Home ) is a British drama film directed by Roy Ward Baker from 1955 and starring Anthony Steel , Peter Finch , Diane Cilento and Cyril Cusack . The film was produced by Group Film Productions Limited for the Rank Organization based on the novel Passage Home by Richard Armstrong .
action
Storyline in the present: At the farewell to their captain John Ryland, the trading company presents its officer with a painting of an old ship. The picture is of the SS-Bolinga, a British freighter with an eventful past, a ship that was mainly used for trade passages for goods and goods traffic to South America . At the handover in the course of the solemn farewell ceremony, the captain had mixed feelings and many decisive memories of his first voyage on this ship. The story is now told as a flashback:
Storyline in the past: The intended passage of the Bolinga with its home port Liverpool was not a good star from the start. There are tough economic times and customs are raw. For many, this boat is the last hope before disembarkation and the associated financial losses and social crash. The year is 1931 and the world economy is in the middle of a depression . Instead of having the ship thoroughly overhauled in its South American port in Villa Monte, the trading company urges you to hurry. Parts of the crew are having fun in a shabby pub, the provisions taken on board are barely edible and to make matters worse , the local Prokunsul Gutierres instructs Captain Ryland to take a passenger with him on the voyage. Ryland, who is not very enthusiastic about this fact, firstly because it is against all of his principles to carry only cargo and no people, and secondly because the officer is used to giving orders himself and not taking them. Only the prospect of making a profit for the shipping company and crew by transporting several breeding bulls on the passage home alleviates his tense condition.
When Ryland personally picks up the passenger on the quay early in the morning , his mood sinks towards zero. A woman comes on board. It is an attractive young governess named Ruth Elton who has to travel home to England for professional reasons , but the captain knows exactly what that means for his officers, the crew and himself, namely an additional burden of responsibility and a bunch of new unwanted problems for everyone involved.
No sooner has Ryland brought the young governess on board and introduced him to his three officers, Llewellyn, Vosper and Stebbings, and then placed them in the pilot's cabin, when all kinds of remarks and superstitious comments are hidden behind his back from all sides. While chief engineer and machinist Pettigrew doesn’t make a murder pit out of his heart and is suspicious of the old seaman's wisdom: "Long hair on the ship brings danger!" Bohannon, the Bolinga's steward, is delighted with the variety and the fact that, as a man with high professional experience and demands, as a former service staff on a luxury steamer, he is able to host a lady as a guest. Parts of the team, on the other hand, see the woman with undisguised sexual lust, others with strict rejection, mistrust or simply indifference. For the next 30 days, and as long as the ship passage to Liverpool will in all probability continue, moving times are guaranteed.
Ernie the boatswain is worried and in poor health during the passage. He strives for harmony and balance on the ship, but he can't really please anyone on board. Shorty, a green and inexperienced boy, gives him grief because he is being used as a scapegoat on all sides . To make matters worse, his wife is expecting her seventh child back home, heavily pregnant, and he is sitting between stools, which is increasingly upsetting his stomach. The atmosphere in the crew is bad, the potatoes, which the captain took on board at a ridiculous price to save in poor times where possible, are already largely rotten and inedible. The trouble is therefore inevitable. In the case of inadequate or miserable food, the crew is known to be in a bad mood. The climate is becoming increasingly irritable.
Meanwhile, the young governess befriends the steward, who is the only one who treats her with respect. The second officer Vosper is sympathetic to her immediately, but he holds back with his feelings. While the chief officer Llewellyn, eaten away by ambition and envy, only dreams of his first own command and promises gloomy prophecies for the voyage, Captain Ryland puts off his initial dislike after a while when Ruth approaches him openly and warmly as a person.
After the first two weeks, when the voyage is halfway over, the captain, who has come to appreciate Ruth more and more as a woman and who suffers greatly from his loneliness, makes her a somewhat awkward marriage proposal in his cabin, which is due to the offer already got something desperate in terms of stressed material security. For the young Ruth, who is still naive in dealing with men, she doesn't know how to deal with it properly and tries not to offend the captain's feelings by politely non-committal instead of a clear refusal, his request sounds a little tempting from a pragmatic safety aspect. She is penniless and just as lonely, but she cannot bring herself to confess. Before the captain can get a final answer from Ruth, they are interrupted in the cabin by Ernie, who enters the cabin at the completely wrong time and refers to the rotten potatoes and the irritable mood in the crew. Ryland is indignant and harshly and uncompromisingly rejects the boatswain.
Meanwhile, the mood in the crew on board continues to deteriorate and is close to tipping over. Burton a sailor goes at Shorty and Ernie vigorously intervenes, a fight breaks out and the boatswain knocks Burton down when he goes at him with an iron chain. The crew is close to mutiny because of the spoiled food and the boatswain can only appease them with difficulty, which is becoming more and more difficult for him physically. In his desperation, he also takes the fact that Shorty has dumped the potatoes into the sea in the meantime on his personal account. But all the efforts of the past few weeks are too much at some point, Ernie collapses completely exhausted and the boatswain is brought into his cabin .
The captain , who is now quite helpless in the face of the entire situation on his ship, reaches for the bottle in his desperation. When Ruth now refuses the renewed marriage proposal for lack of love, Ryland suddenly becomes violent and attacks the woman in a very drunk state. Vosper the 2nd officer intervenes and thus prevents a possible rape , at the cost of knocking the captain to the ground. When Ryland threatens his second officer with punishment, he informs him that the boatswain Ernie has just died. The captain is shocked.
Ryland, who basically valued Ernie as a capable and reliable seaman but completely wrongly assessed the health situation of his boatswain, makes bitter reproaches and now grabs the bottle all the more violently. When he is supposed to hold the service for the boatman who has died at sea the next morning and thus pay his last respects to him, he is almost unable to do so. Ruth helps the heavily drunk captain with strong coffee halfway on his feet. John Ryland is because of its rigor and its hard-line stance in the crew now in disgrace fallen. The crew expects the necessary respect from the captain for their dead comrade. The ceremony is short, unadorned, and impersonal due to the condition of Ryland.
After the burial of Ernie's body on the high seas, bad weather comes up, as if the gods were angry with this unworthy spectacle. Vosper, who is secretly happy about Ruth's rejection of the captain, confesses his true feelings to her in the meantime. The first tender bonds are made. The wind and rain soon turn into a storm and officers and crew fight desperately for the ship in the darkness of the night. Since the captain is again sitting in his cabin, drunk like a pile of misery, the chief officer Llewellyn suddenly has a duty and is completely overwhelmed with the sudden responsibility in this emergency situation. He shows nerves and wants to turn in a storm and have the ship towed if necessary. At this moment the captain steps into the wheelhouse and, drunk, takes the helm himself. Later on, he doesn't want to simply leave his ship to a rescue team , but rather fight energetically against the storm with a little bit of pride. Despite the danger that the coal supplies on board could run out, he orders full speed ahead.
Ruth, who no longer wants to stay in her cabin due to the violent swell and the first water ingress, does the completely wrong thing and steps through the door into the middle of the storm. A mast swings threateningly with every movement of the ship over the deck. Fountains of water and huge breakers wash the young woman across the ship's floor. Vosper, realizing the impending disaster, rushes to help. Together they fight with all their strength not to be washed off board. Vosper can pull Ruth to him at the last moment and carry her back to her cabin. Ruth shows her gratitude to her savior.
The captain is meanwhile on the bridge to the old top form. In the middle of the storm , the experienced and competent seaman is suddenly wide awake and in his element. The captain can stand his man there. Ryland saves the ship with a hussar ride on the waves and brings it safely back to port in England.
Storyline back to the present: Captain Ryland, noticeably aged, leaves the ship of the trading company with a bit of sadness, after many years he bought a small house on the coast with his savings, lying rather lonely, but he is used to the loneliness . Mr. and Mrs. Vosper stand at the railing to say goodbye and Ruth sheds open tears when Ryland gets into a car alone down on the quay and you don't know whether they are tears of regret or tears of sympathy.
synchronization
The German synchronization was created by the Rank-Film Synchron-Produktion Hamburg.
| role | actor | Dubbing voice |
|---|---|---|
| Vosper 2nd officer | Anthony Steel | Sebastian Fischer |
| Captain John Ryland "Lucky" | Peter Finch | Wolfgang Eichberger |
| Ruth Elton | Diane Cilento | Karin Himboldt |
| Bohannon the steward | Cyril Cusack | Gert Niemitz |
| Ernie the boatswain | Geoffrey Keen | Arnold Marquis |
| Pettigrew the chief engineer | Hugh Griffith | Helmut Peine |
| Llewellyn 1st Officer | Duncan Lamont | Heinz Reincke |
| Ted Burns ship's carpenter | Gordon Jackson | Werner Dahms |
| Shorty | Bryan Forbes | Hans Günther Sr. |
| Sheltia | Sam Kydd | Joseph Offenbach |
Reviews
“On a cargo steamer that was en route from South America to England in the 1930s, two ship officers compete for an attractive passenger. Uncomplicated love and sailor film that gets additional tension from a storm. "
Production notes
Muir Mathieson was the musical director. The buildings are by Alex Vetchinsky . Phyllis Dalton provided the costumes . Geoffrey Rodway was the make-up artist and Roy Goddard was in charge of production. The film was set at Pinewood Studios in Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire in England .
DVD
- Format: Dolby, HiFi sound, PAL
- Language: German (Dolby Digital 2.0), English (Dolby Digital 2.0)
- Region: all regions
- Aspect ratio: 4: 3 - 1.33: 1
- Number of discs: 1
- FSK released from 12 years
- Studio: Phoenix Neue Medien GmbH
- Release Date: March 20, 2006
- Production year: 1955
- First performance: April 1955 (England)
- First performance: October 28, 1955 (Germany)
- Playing time: 97 minutes
Web links
- A woman comes aboard in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ A woman comes on board in the synchronous database
- ↑ A woman comes on board. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .