AboveDeepBuggy Some things I liked some I did not.

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Richard Chatten Marlene Dietrich is the only woman on board a ship full of sex-starved human detritus! With a plot like that and this director how can you possibly fail?Quite easily it turns out. This might have clocked in at a satisfactory 80 minutes, but instead the cast for the most part aimlessly mill about for over two hours. Dietrich's role is effectively a sub-plot; she only comes aboard over a third of the way in, and it then takes another half-hour for the crew to find out. She thereafter proves a disappointingly passive heroine as the crew career about in search of her, and her final appearance in the film is in extreme long shot. The big close-up at the end instead goes to the resourceful ship's cook, Vladimir Sokoloff, who has admittedly earned it by giving the film's best performance.

JohnHowardReid A long movie -- the excellent Grapevine DVD runs 122 minutes -- but literally every frame is utterly fascinating. Director Maurice Tourneur obviously had an enormous budget at his disposal and has spared no expense in bringing this dark story to the screen. A "film noir" if ever there was one, a great deal of the movie is set in the shadows -- shadows which are brilliantly contrasted with the rescue ship's piercing lights. The sets too are all cleverly designed to highlight this same contrast between Good and Evil. Until he is overthrown, Fritz Kortner dominates the movie as the utterly inhuman captain, a Lucifer in a hell of devils.We keep waiting for Dietrich and wondering how on earth she will fit into the story, until she finally appears. She then becomes the center of our attention, pushing the nominal hero, somewhat bland Robin Irvine, further into the sidelines. As for Vladimir Sokoloff, he has an important role to play at the climax, but he is not all that active in the rest of the film. In fact, we wonder why some half-baked American publicist titled the movie, "Grischa the Cook", instead of translating the German title, "The Ship of Lost Men" or using a title that would highlight Dietrich's role. She certainly bears watching, In fact she is wonderful in what is actually a character role!

anches-725-976306 My copy of this film has a solo piano score and the titles are a mixture of the original German and later English; the titles are, however, few and far between, so the viewer needs a good imagination to fill in the story. Dietrich is not yet the chiselled beauty she soon became and has a more natural look. Robin Irvine is the handsome hero, who sometimes looks a little like Charles Farrell. As you might expect, it is a dark film and quite explicit in its portrayal of aggressive male sexuality. In one scene, a sailor draws a chalk picture of the woman with exaggerated bosom and angel wings, leaving no doubt as to what he and his shipmates have in mind when they get their hands on her. The ending is a happy one, but not until Dietrich has been brutally attacked by the leader of the mutineers in a startlingly realistic fight scene. A film well worth watching; maybe a few more titles would help !

boblipton Tourneur's last silent movie shows his full command of the silent film grammar -- much of which he invented -- in his beautiful compositions and still camera, punctuated for excellent effect by purposeful moving and process shots. He never uses the camera to make the viewer gasp at his brilliance, but only to punctuate a psychological point or improve the film's pace.The story, from the novel by Franzos Keremen, is a commentary on Jack London's SEA WOLF. London's Wolf Larsen is a Nietzschean philosopher. The captain, in this movie, is a schemer among brutes -- a correction to London's drunken maunderings that might have served humanity better. It is the gentle cook, played by Vladimir Sokoloff that is the real hero of the story after the crew mutinies and kills the ship's master.The movie also stars Marlene Dietrich, a few months before von Sternberg supposedly plucked her from obscurity. She looks a lot like Claudette Colbert in this movie and shows her command of film acting already. Very highly recommended.