ThiefHott Too much of everything

BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Supelice Dreadfully Boring

chrissso Perhaps … if they had added English subtitles to this film … and kept its original soundtrack … I would have liked it a lot more. But they didn't … they dubbed English over the existing film and did a horrible job of it! There is a reason why the practice of overdubbing has been abandoned! The results typically destroy a film (remember all those Japanese Monster films of the 70's) and that is the case here. More so there seems to be a big problem with the translation or even the script … I kept thinking did he really say that??? I understand that the film is a "tiny budget" Swiss film from 1981 … but film making is an art … and this film fails artistically on many levels. It just seemed so amateur.I also get that this was a courageous undertaking by the Director and Producer that angered many Swiss people. They challenge the notion … the remembrance … of Swiss neutrality … showing that it was quite different than what we see at the end of The Sound of Music. More so they illustrate the fact that Switzerland … albeit neutral … was in fact subservient to the Germans.This is a film that can generate conversation … thus I give it a couple of extra stars … but as a film goes it stinks! 6/10

beatle1909 I hated most of the characters in this movie. I hated the ending. I had trouble sleeping after I saw the film. A movie that affected me this much, must be brilliant. It is! In all its aspects. Simple storytelling at its best. A shame, and a sin, that it is all true. And you know it cuts right to the bone, after you become aware, as to how the movie was shunned in Switzerland, and how all but one print of the film managed to survive, after its initial release. Thank you, thank you, thank you, to the filmmakers and actors that made the Boat is Full, a reality. I have seen quite a few films, relating to the Holocast, and this is by far the the most horrific. As I said before, simple, yet effective.

Howard Schumann In 1996 a panel was created called the Independent Commission of Experts headed by historian Jean Francois Bergier to study Switzerland's wartime past. The report of the Bergier Commission, though acknowledging the many refugees Switzerland accepted during 1940-45, condemned its wartime practices of deporting Jewish refugees (around 30,000) back to Germany, accusing Swiss officials of pursuing an inhumane policy at odds with the country's tradition of offering asylum to those facing persecution. A Swiss/Austrian/West German co-production, Markus Imhoof's striking drama The Boat is Full dramatizes this issue, challenging myths about Swiss wartime virtue and innocence.Nominated for an Oscar in 1982 for Best Foreign Film, The Boat is Full is not widely known in the U.S. but it is one of the finest films dealing with the holocaust. In the film, a group of German Jewish refugees must pretend they are a family in order to be granted asylum in Switzerland (refugee families with children under 6 are allowed to remain in Switzerland) but are faced with the rigidity of small-minded bureaucrats who see it as their duty to uphold the letter of the law. As the film opens, a German train is halted because of a Swiss attempt to wall off the tunnel to close potential escape routes. Six people, four Jews, a French child, and a deserting German soldier jump off the train and seek refuge at a rural inn, run by a married couple Laurent and Franz Fluckiger (Renate Steiger and Mathias Gnadinger). It is only afterwards that they discover that the country maintains strict quotas and that they are in danger of being deported.To survive, they pose as a family. Judith Kruger (Tina Engel), a young woman, pretends that she is the wife of Karl Schneider (Gerd David), a Nazi deserter, an elderly man from Vienna, Lazar Ostrowskij (Curt Bois) pretends to be her father, and a young boy (Simone Maruice), who can only speak French, pretends that he is a deaf mute. The scheme is threatened, however, when a hard-nosed constable comes to investigate and Judith's real husband escapes from a work camp and tries to find her. Though we do not know the protagonists on other than a surface level, The Boat is Full is still a powerful film that reminds us that rigidly supporting the letter of the law does not always mean adhering to its spirit, or understanding the personal consequences that may result.

Jonathan Doron Good span of characters, the movie lacks another storyline other than the couple hiding the refugees (and a little more, too little). It's too long for the little story it holds, while it does hint the characters have some more in them. Well acted, touching and haunting, is does light a different angle about Switzerland's neutrality- still being unraveled today in the news.