– The Boat is Full –

‘THE BOAT IS FULL’ By JANET MASLIN Published: April 25, 1981 The best films in the New Directors/ New Films series, co-sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art, are those that qualify as discoveries. ”The Boat Is Full” is something more, something in the neighborhood of a revelation. Markus Imhoof, who wrote and directed this Swiss-German-Austrian co-production, works with such grace and assurance that he in no way seems to be a novice, notwithstanding the series’ title. His film is fresh, purposeful and surprising at every turn. ”The Boat Is Full,” which is set during World War II, begins as a small band of refugees crosses the German border into Switzerland. The refugees find an inn, and persuade the proprietress to sell them a meal. They are terrified of deportation, and soon the stolid proprietress is willing to help them stay. It seems, for a while, as if they can pose as a family, even though most of them were unacquainted when the journey began. Refugee families with children under 6 are allowed to remain in Switzerland, and this group is lucky enough to include a tiny boy -even though the adults are all German and the child, unless he is carefully silenced, speaks French. The refugees shift through one ploy after another, in a story that remains suspenseful to the very end. Mr. Imhoof’s principal emphasis, though, is on the Swiss community into which the refugees have stumbled. The Swiss, as Mr. Imhoof represents them, cannot exactly be accused of unkindness; murderous fastidiousness is closer to the truth. Their ostensible concern is for abiding by the rules, whatever those rules may be. And so the reaction of many of the townsfolk to these newcomers is not one of overt anti-Semitism. It’s more like a disdain for scofflaws. When Judith Kruger (Tina Engel), the young woman in the refugee group, offers her most desperate lie, two guards shake their heads in disbelief. ”They would try anything,” the guards say contemptuously of the refugees. Mr. Imhoof doesn’t so much tell this story as let it unfold dizzyingly. The camera moves as constantly and unexpectedly as the characters’ strategies change, often framing the actors with a painterly precision. One particularly beautiful sequence has the players arranging themselves as a family, trying to guess what will look most convincing: Should Judith pretend to be married to her brother, who looks so much younger than she, or to the Nazi deserter, whom she automatically loathes? As they pose tentatively, then rearrange themselves and pose again, Mr. Imhoof captures the utter arbitrariness of their situation. It seems no more nonsensical to them that they be fake family members than that they live as outcasts at all. Mr. Imhoof presents this simply, without excessive irony or emotion, and with only the occasional attention-getting image (as when the proprietress soaks a picture postcard of the town, borrowed by a child in the refugee group to send to her friends back in Germany, in a bowl of water). His restraint is mirrored in the performances, which are uniformly forceful and spare. Miss Engel is particularly affecting, with her air of tight control bordering on panic. Also especially good are Curt Bois, as an elderly man determined to retain his dignity, and Mathias Gnadinger and Renate Steiger as the married couple who run the inn. Mr. Gnadinger, in particular, is used so effectively that the various camera angles from which he is seen say as much about his character as the performance does. Mr. Imhoof is particularly skillful in revealing his characters’ thoughts through the gentle, telling way in which each scene is framed.

I have found that ‘the law’ and doing the right thing, the humane act of kindness are not always aligned and infact often collide. Good flick IMHO