An interesting premise, somewhere between "Casablanca" and Suzie Wong, with name-brand actors. But this wound up as a weak period piece redeemed by a few (very few) clever moments and many nice background shots of Hong Kong as it was. Not many mid-20th-century films produced in the West with Hong Kong themes are available on DVD or video (at least we have "World of Suzie Wong") and fewer still had actual Hong Kong locations, so I am not disappointed in the film. Otherwise, it's a watchable "B" movie with Orson Welles as a bonus.
12 Reviews
Good film
allan_done28 June 2019
Apparently this film did very badly at the box office, yet in time it may be regarded with the same nostalgia as the all time classics.
It has a top class cast and is much underrated. Well worth watching again and again.
Beating the dragon
Prismark108 April 2017
Ferry to Hong Kong is a mildly amusing film due to an obese Orson Welles treating the film as a farcical comedy. He plays Captain Hart, who despite the prissy exterior is a bit of a blackguard. He runs an old ferry between Hong Kong to Macau.
Hart is stuck with Mark Conrad (Curd Jürgens) a drunken, troublemaker, expelled from Hong Kong and denied entry to Macau. He is destined to remain a passenger on the ferry much to Hart's anger, he even sets up a rigged bet to get rid off this unwanted passenger. Despite looking dishevelled Conrad earns the sympathy of Liz (Sylvia Syms) who is a teacher to some children regularly on board.
Conrad and Captain Hart have to set aside their mutual loathing when the ship encounters a typhoon and later seized by pirates with Conrad having to take responsibility and control of the situation the ship's passengers find themselves in.
The film benefits from the Hong Kong location shooting which provides a colourful backdrop, the script is pedestrian and at times hammy as Welles performance.
Hart is stuck with Mark Conrad (Curd Jürgens) a drunken, troublemaker, expelled from Hong Kong and denied entry to Macau. He is destined to remain a passenger on the ferry much to Hart's anger, he even sets up a rigged bet to get rid off this unwanted passenger. Despite looking dishevelled Conrad earns the sympathy of Liz (Sylvia Syms) who is a teacher to some children regularly on board.
Conrad and Captain Hart have to set aside their mutual loathing when the ship encounters a typhoon and later seized by pirates with Conrad having to take responsibility and control of the situation the ship's passengers find themselves in.
The film benefits from the Hong Kong location shooting which provides a colourful backdrop, the script is pedestrian and at times hammy as Welles performance.
Truly Tragic
eddie-8311 November 2001
After boy-genius Orson Welles gave us his debut masterpiece `Citizen Kane', followed it up with the wonderful `Magnificent Ambersons'(and who could forget his charismatic Harry Lime in Carol Reed's `Third Man'?) he really had nowhere to go except down.
But I never expected to see him as he is in `Ferry to Hong Kong' mugging and pulling faces to try to produce cheap laughs in an awful English accent. He even waddles around at one stage with a board strapped to his back, all dignity gone. To paraphrase a well-known script-writer from Stratford `When great Orson fell, what a fall was there!'
Otherwise this is a pretty poor attempt at a comedy with perhaps some interest for those who want to see ever-changing Hong Kong as it was in the late Fifties.
I wish I hadn't seen `Ferry to Hong Kong'
But I never expected to see him as he is in `Ferry to Hong Kong' mugging and pulling faces to try to produce cheap laughs in an awful English accent. He even waddles around at one stage with a board strapped to his back, all dignity gone. To paraphrase a well-known script-writer from Stratford `When great Orson fell, what a fall was there!'
Otherwise this is a pretty poor attempt at a comedy with perhaps some interest for those who want to see ever-changing Hong Kong as it was in the late Fifties.
I wish I hadn't seen `Ferry to Hong Kong'
Storm in the Port
cultfilmfreaksdotcom11 October 2012
Warning: Spoilers
This could have made a great pilot for a TV series: The premise has maverick loafer Mark Conrad, played by Curt Jurgens, winding up on a Ferry from Hong Kong to Macau. Officials at either port won't let him on land so he has to remain a passenger on the Ferry.
Now for the antagonist Orson Welles as Captain Hart, an uptight, prissy jerk that runs the boat with a iron fist. Both Conrad and Hart couldn't be more different and much of the film has them at odds, both at sea and on land. But let's not forget the love interest – Sylvia Sims as Liz, a beautiful (too young for Jurgens) missionary with a bevy of orphans, can't help but love the grungy loner who has a heart of gold like any scruffy anti hero.
Jurgens makes for a decent lead while Orson Welles provides an annoying British accent, sounding like an imitation of an uptight character meant to be hated by the audience and the people around him. Although there are moments when he becomes a real human being, mostly as he's pushed by Conrad, who eventually takes command when pirates hijack after a formidable storm.
The Asian locations are beautiful and the direction by Lewis Gilbert (THE SPY WHO LOVED ME) flows. And despite a somewhat clunky script, not sure whether to be a comedy, romance, or adventure, by the end you'll want to spend more time on that boat, a cozy enough place to be stuck without a paddle.
For More Reviews: www.cultfilmfreaks.com
Now for the antagonist Orson Welles as Captain Hart, an uptight, prissy jerk that runs the boat with a iron fist. Both Conrad and Hart couldn't be more different and much of the film has them at odds, both at sea and on land. But let's not forget the love interest – Sylvia Sims as Liz, a beautiful (too young for Jurgens) missionary with a bevy of orphans, can't help but love the grungy loner who has a heart of gold like any scruffy anti hero.
Jurgens makes for a decent lead while Orson Welles provides an annoying British accent, sounding like an imitation of an uptight character meant to be hated by the audience and the people around him. Although there are moments when he becomes a real human being, mostly as he's pushed by Conrad, who eventually takes command when pirates hijack after a formidable storm.
The Asian locations are beautiful and the direction by Lewis Gilbert (THE SPY WHO LOVED ME) flows. And despite a somewhat clunky script, not sure whether to be a comedy, romance, or adventure, by the end you'll want to spend more time on that boat, a cozy enough place to be stuck without a paddle.
For More Reviews: www.cultfilmfreaks.com
Well at least the scenery is interesting
malcolmgsw26 November 2016
As has been mentioned it is extremely interesting to see Hong Kong as it was in the 1950s,much different to the way it is today.However as to the film,what we're they thinking of.Lewis Gilbert is such an experienced director having made so many fine films.Orson Welled is completely out of sync with everyone else.I couldn't work out if he was doing an impersonation of Charles Laughton or Arthur Treacher.Sylvia Simms as a romantic lead for Curt Jurgens.Apparently Jurgens was constantly arguing with WellesThe pirate theme at the end at least brings a bit of action to the end of the film.You don't know whether to laugh or cry.Maybe the best description is,it's Rank.
Well worth the trip
michaelparle119 February 2017
Absolutely fantastic film with three greats at the top of their game The legend Noel Purcell, Jurgens & Wells as two opposites or are they are excellently cast.
Wells English accent & comedy timing is very good, shame he didn't do more comedy, Jurgens is just pure class as the black sheep rouge
Amazing action sets the wonderful cast crew locations are a gem of its time well worth a watch and beautiful Sylvia Syms always a treat
Wells English accent & comedy timing is very good, shame he didn't do more comedy, Jurgens is just pure class as the black sheep rouge
Amazing action sets the wonderful cast crew locations are a gem of its time well worth a watch and beautiful Sylvia Syms always a treat
Really cute, like 'Father Goose'
HotToastyRag31 March 2023
If you liked Father Goose, check out an obscure movie with a somewhat similar feel to it: Ferry to Hong Kong. Curd Jurgens plays a scruffy barfly with a temper, and when the authorities have finally had enough of him, they ship him out of Hong Kong to Macao on Captain Orson Welles's ferry. However, Macau won't let him in and ships him back to Hong Kong. Orson hates him, but there's nothing to be done, so back and forth ad nauseum they travel. Enter Sylvia Syms, a pretty and proper English schoolteacher in charge of some Chinese kids who take the ferry every Friday.
This movie does have a darker turn to it, with typhoons and pirates to worry about - but then again, Father Goose has Nazis and snake bites. I loved seeing Curd let his hair down in this fun, comical role. As usual, he's larger than life, and even his drunken demeaner is endearing. Sylvia gives a great Deborah Kerr impression, and you keep hoping for her sake that he'll clean up. He and Sylvia (or he and Deborah, for that matter) could have easily handled Father Goose. Although, Orson Welles with his caterpillar-esque accent and strange expressions probably couldn't have played the straight-faced Trevor Howard counterpart.
There's the most adorable scene when Curd finally cleans up and takes Sylvia "out to dinner" on the ferry since he's legally prohibited from stepping foot on land. Predating The Terminal by fifty years, he prepares a delightful evening on the boat with the help of a few friends and their imagination. They point to empty tables and gossip about other patrons, they look over the menu carefully, and they indulge in martinis, wine, champagne, and brandy. Of course, they're all alone, they only eat bowls of rice, and there's only one little liquor bottle to sustain them. But it's incredibly sweet and easily the best scene in the movie.
If you've only seen Curd playing soldiers or if you want a China Seas adventure with a bit of laughter and a lot of charm, find a copy of this movie. It'll make you an instant fan.
DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. During the typhoon scene, the camera tilts back and forth quite a bit, and that will make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"
This movie does have a darker turn to it, with typhoons and pirates to worry about - but then again, Father Goose has Nazis and snake bites. I loved seeing Curd let his hair down in this fun, comical role. As usual, he's larger than life, and even his drunken demeaner is endearing. Sylvia gives a great Deborah Kerr impression, and you keep hoping for her sake that he'll clean up. He and Sylvia (or he and Deborah, for that matter) could have easily handled Father Goose. Although, Orson Welles with his caterpillar-esque accent and strange expressions probably couldn't have played the straight-faced Trevor Howard counterpart.
There's the most adorable scene when Curd finally cleans up and takes Sylvia "out to dinner" on the ferry since he's legally prohibited from stepping foot on land. Predating The Terminal by fifty years, he prepares a delightful evening on the boat with the help of a few friends and their imagination. They point to empty tables and gossip about other patrons, they look over the menu carefully, and they indulge in martinis, wine, champagne, and brandy. Of course, they're all alone, they only eat bowls of rice, and there's only one little liquor bottle to sustain them. But it's incredibly sweet and easily the best scene in the movie.
If you've only seen Curd playing soldiers or if you want a China Seas adventure with a bit of laughter and a lot of charm, find a copy of this movie. It'll make you an instant fan.
DLM Warning: If you suffer from vertigo or dizzy spells, like my mom does, this movie might not be your friend. During the typhoon scene, the camera tilts back and forth quite a bit, and that will make you sick. In other words, "Don't Look, Mom!"
When an actor spoils a film
Leofwine_draca24 April 2017
Warning: Spoilers
FERRY TO HONG KONG is a British thriller set on board a ship sailing around the seas between Hong Kong and Macau. The story benefits from location shooting but is let down by a dominating performance from Orson Welles as the ship's captain; while everybody else takes the story seriously and give appropriately serious performances, Welles is under the misconception that he's shooting a broad comedy and his over the top performance is quite farcical.
The film's main strength lies in the underrated Curt Jurgens who makes for an understated lead. He's an underdog character, a man without a home who looks like a tramp for the most part, and yet his heroism shines through as the story goes on. The tale is rather stodgy with pedestrian direction and a definite lack of suspense, although it picks up with some good stuff at the climax. The interesting supporting cast includes Sylvia Syms as the love interest, Noel Purcell as an engineer, future actor Roy Chiao (of INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM fame) as a pirate and the great and hulking Milton Reid as a really nasty piece of work.
The film's main strength lies in the underrated Curt Jurgens who makes for an understated lead. He's an underdog character, a man without a home who looks like a tramp for the most part, and yet his heroism shines through as the story goes on. The tale is rather stodgy with pedestrian direction and a definite lack of suspense, although it picks up with some good stuff at the climax. The interesting supporting cast includes Sylvia Syms as the love interest, Noel Purcell as an engineer, future actor Roy Chiao (of INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM fame) as a pirate and the great and hulking Milton Reid as a really nasty piece of work.
Ship Of Fools
writers_reign3 October 2016
Warning: Spoilers
As a lifetime devotee of Orson Welles I am prepared to watch him in anything even when common sense warns that a given title is total rubbish. Accordingly I watched this many moons ago and found it dire. I've just watched it again on television and found it way, way BEYOND dire. Apparently Welles and Jurgens fell out during shooting; Jurgens thought they were making a serious drama (no one said actors need to be intelligent) and after reading the script Welles realised the only chance they had - and that was remote - was to play it as farce. In a desperate effort to salvage SOMETHING they even ripped off The Captain's Paradise by having Noel Purcell (it is to laugh) attempt to eclipse Alec Guiness by having a wife in both Hong Kong and Macau. Strictly banjo-pics.
Orson not so awesome?
xpat-551928 December 2020
While I thought Orson Wells was miscast as the captain when there were many better-suited actors for that role, I felt that overall, the film was well acted by the rest of the cast.
An entertaining story was supported by capable 1959 movie-maker's - albeit them having to endure the malaise of that era's technological restrictions.
An easy watch.
Two hijacks
Oct8 May 2020
Orson Welles bulked up to play Hank Quinlan in 'Touch of Evil'. Soon afterwards he pitched up in this British effort to crack foreign markets with a multinational cast and exotic location shooting- and it became clear that he had surrendered in the battle of avoirdupois.
A shame, because he thereby condemned himself to playing 'larger than life' characters in historical romps or fantasies to finance his gargantuan appetites and bootlace productions. Trying to get closer to normality, as he had been in 'Tomorrow is Forever' or his own 'Lady from Shanghai', might have stretched him more than Genghis Khan, Louis XVIII or Long John Silver.
As Captain Cecil Hart, apparently a pompous British owner-captain of the titular old tub, Welles starts out as a relatively normal if annoying fellow, redeemed by his love of flowers and pet birds. But he soon devolves into spluttering, grimacing and waddling, like Charles Laughton slumming it with Abbott and Costello. And inevitably the skipper is unmasked as yet another flimflam artist: Welles gave dissenters from the martyred-genius myth ammo by playing so many.
He has his cigar, his card-deck prestidigitation and matchlessly modulated voice to remind us of the real Orson. His accent hovers between Brandoesque British and Father Mapple, with brief reminders of 'Black Irish, notorious waterfront agitator'. It is a ham's attempt to hijack the film, on a par with the Chinese pirates' attempt on the 'Fat Annie', and it is a disservice to his co-stars. As usual, Welles tried to rewrite his dialogue and take over direction, resisted by Lewis Gilbert. Curt Jurgens objected and the result was an unhappy shoot.
Gilbert hated the result, but it has its pleasures. He reconciles a largely confined setting and small star cast well with CinemaScope, while the shore footage of an amazingly undeveloped Hong Kong and Macau looks gorgeous in the brief heyday of Eastmancolor, which outdid monopack Technicolor. The cinematography comes up pin-sharp and lustrous; really there has been no progress in that department in sixty years. A former boy actor, Gilbert coaxes nice cameos from Sylvia Syms's schoolgirl flock.
Jurgens, replacing Peter Finch, has to wear one soiled suit all through. He seemed a strange choice but his hard edges as an Anglo-Austrian drifter, brawler and drunk are not planed down for a family film; his charm and courage emerge persuasively, and his blue eyes shine more brightly as he shapes up.
Syms was at the height of her beauty as an English rose with a steel core, following 'Ice Cold in Alex'. Noel Purcell contrives to take the nasty taste out of being an Irish engineer with a Chinese wife and big family in each port, though neither spouse speaks.
This is a very colonial flick, in which the only natives are hoodlums. And its structural problem is the tacked-on second climax of the pirate raid. Jurgens superseding the drunk Captain during a typhoon was enough to exonerate him. But we then have to sit through twenty minutes of menace from a bald thug, including a very discordant moment of violence involving the ever-wimpish Jeremy Spenser as the Captain's cowardly underling.
Welles is sidelined by then. For some reason he spends the last two reels dead drunk or with a board strapped to his back, as if the production were punishing him for insubordination.
Whatever his regrets, Gilbert went back to the Far East for my favourite Bond film, 'You Only Live Twice', and used Jurgens as the villain in 'The Spy Who Loved Me'.
A shame, because he thereby condemned himself to playing 'larger than life' characters in historical romps or fantasies to finance his gargantuan appetites and bootlace productions. Trying to get closer to normality, as he had been in 'Tomorrow is Forever' or his own 'Lady from Shanghai', might have stretched him more than Genghis Khan, Louis XVIII or Long John Silver.
As Captain Cecil Hart, apparently a pompous British owner-captain of the titular old tub, Welles starts out as a relatively normal if annoying fellow, redeemed by his love of flowers and pet birds. But he soon devolves into spluttering, grimacing and waddling, like Charles Laughton slumming it with Abbott and Costello. And inevitably the skipper is unmasked as yet another flimflam artist: Welles gave dissenters from the martyred-genius myth ammo by playing so many.
He has his cigar, his card-deck prestidigitation and matchlessly modulated voice to remind us of the real Orson. His accent hovers between Brandoesque British and Father Mapple, with brief reminders of 'Black Irish, notorious waterfront agitator'. It is a ham's attempt to hijack the film, on a par with the Chinese pirates' attempt on the 'Fat Annie', and it is a disservice to his co-stars. As usual, Welles tried to rewrite his dialogue and take over direction, resisted by Lewis Gilbert. Curt Jurgens objected and the result was an unhappy shoot.
Gilbert hated the result, but it has its pleasures. He reconciles a largely confined setting and small star cast well with CinemaScope, while the shore footage of an amazingly undeveloped Hong Kong and Macau looks gorgeous in the brief heyday of Eastmancolor, which outdid monopack Technicolor. The cinematography comes up pin-sharp and lustrous; really there has been no progress in that department in sixty years. A former boy actor, Gilbert coaxes nice cameos from Sylvia Syms's schoolgirl flock.
Jurgens, replacing Peter Finch, has to wear one soiled suit all through. He seemed a strange choice but his hard edges as an Anglo-Austrian drifter, brawler and drunk are not planed down for a family film; his charm and courage emerge persuasively, and his blue eyes shine more brightly as he shapes up.
Syms was at the height of her beauty as an English rose with a steel core, following 'Ice Cold in Alex'. Noel Purcell contrives to take the nasty taste out of being an Irish engineer with a Chinese wife and big family in each port, though neither spouse speaks.
This is a very colonial flick, in which the only natives are hoodlums. And its structural problem is the tacked-on second climax of the pirate raid. Jurgens superseding the drunk Captain during a typhoon was enough to exonerate him. But we then have to sit through twenty minutes of menace from a bald thug, including a very discordant moment of violence involving the ever-wimpish Jeremy Spenser as the Captain's cowardly underling.
Welles is sidelined by then. For some reason he spends the last two reels dead drunk or with a board strapped to his back, as if the production were punishing him for insubordination.
Whatever his regrets, Gilbert went back to the Far East for my favourite Bond film, 'You Only Live Twice', and used Jurgens as the villain in 'The Spy Who Loved Me'.
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