Trailer
Plot summary
Robert Crain is a rich German engineer and pacifist who left for India under a false Swiss name when the Wehrmacht conscripted him. Colonel Statter of British Army Intelligence blackmails him into a plan to grab a cargo of rubber that the German merchant ship Ingo will carry from Japan to occupied Bordeaux. Because German merchant crews must scuttle their ships rather than lose such cargoes, Crain's job is to use his engineering training to render the Ingo's scuttling charges useless. He sails under the cover of Standartenführer Hans Keil, an SS officer headed home. On board, the captain, Müller, is a patriotic German at odds with Nazi principles, while his first officer, Kruse, is a fanatical Party man who keeps the captain under close watch, and the crew mixes Nazi loyalists with political prisoners.
Cast
- Martin Brandtas Nissen
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Morituri (1965)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston and Robert Stack were all considered to play Crane in Morituri, and Lee J. Cobb was originally cast as the Captain before Yul Brynner replaced him before filming began.
- Martin Ritt was originally attached to direct Morituri but was fired over disagreements with producer Aaron Rosenberg and star Marlon Brando.
- Much of Morituri was shot aboard a real, repurposed World War II-era German freighter called the Blue Dolphin; the rest was filmed on the 20th Century Fox backlot in Hollywood.
- After a series of box office disappointments, Marlon Brando promoted Morituri at a day-long press junket at the Hampshire House in New York City, and the event became Meet Marlon Brando (1966), a 29-minute documentary by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Zwerin.
