''Fährmann Maria'' ( ''Ferryman Maria'') is a 1936 German

horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit physical or psychological fear in its viewers. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with Transgressive art, transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements of the genre include Mo ...

directed by

Frank Wisbar Frank Wisbar (born Franz Wysbar; 9 December 1899 – 17 March 1967) was a German film director and screenwriter. He directed more than 20 films between 1932 and 1967 in Germany and the United States, as well as amassing many television credits. H ...

and starring

Sybille Schmitz Sybille Maria Christina Schmitz (2 December 1909 – 13 April 1955) was a German actress. Biography Schmitz attended an acting school in Cologne and got her first engagement at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1927. Only one year l ...

Plot

An elderly man operates a ferry near a small village. One evening, he weakens and dies while ferrying a silent stranger dressed in black. Some time later, a homeless woman arrives in the village seeking employment, and takes over the ferrying duties. The next evening, a wounded man boards her ferry. She hides him from his pursuers and nurses him back to health in her hut. Gradually, they fall in love. Soon the silent stranger in black appears on the far shore, summoning the ferry. As they cross the river, he eventually breaks his silence to inquire about the wounded man. Maria realizes that the stranger is Death itself, and she seeks to outwit him by directing him away from her hut and into the village where a festival is in progress. The villagers at the festival recoil from the stranger, who dances with Maria until she escapes from him and runs to a church. She falls to the floor and prays for death to take her and spare the wounded man. The stranger finds Maria in the church and demands to be led to her hut. To reach it they must walk across a marsh. As they negotiate the treacherous path through the marsh, Maria again prays that her own life be sacrificed so the man she has been sheltering may live. The stranger makes a wrong step and sinks into the mud. The marsh swallows him completely and Maria gets safely away. The next morning, Maria and her lover ferry to the opposite shore to begin a new life together.

Cast

as Maria * Aribert Moog as Wounded man *

Peter Voß Peter Voß (29 June 1891 – 9 January 1979) was a German film actor. His acting career started in the late 1920s in the last years of the Silent film, silent film era and continued into the sound era until 1959. Partial filmography * ''Love an ...

as the Stranger / Death *

Karl Platen Karl Platen (6 March 1877 – 4 July 1952) was a German actor and cinematographer of the Silent film, silent era and later the sound era and known for ''Girl in the Moon (film), Girl in the Moon'' (1929) and ''M (1931 film), M'' (1931). Biogr ...

as The Ferryman

Production

The interior scenes were shot in Berlin studios from August to October in 1935 while the outdoor scenes were filmed in Lower Saxony (the Hamburg, Bremen and Hanover areas) near a farm called Tütsberg in the village of Heber, and also near Soltau.

Release

The film premiered at the Bernward Light Games in Hildesheim on January 7, 1936.

Awards

The

National Socialists Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

had changed film inspection standards in 1934 (originally to increase the quality of film production by creating censorship standards) to also cover film awards, and as a result movies would be awarded extra consideration, and lower taxes, if they were deemed state-politically and artistically particularly valuable. Though

Joseph Goebbels Paul Joseph Goebbels (; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and philologist who was the ''Gauleiter'' (district leader) of Berlin, chief Propaganda in Nazi Germany, propagandist for the Nazi Party, and ...

, Propaganda Minister for the

Third Reich Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictat ...

, dismissed it as "an experiment, but not a good one", the film still received an award for artistic value.

Remake

After Wisbar emigrated from Germany to the U.S. following the November

pogroms A pogrom is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe late 19th- and early 20th-century attacks on Jews i ...

of 1938 (

Kristallnacht ( ) or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from the Hitler Youth and German civilia ...

) he worked odd jobs in cinema. In 1945, he remade ''Fährmann Maria'' as '' Strangler of the Swamp'' for

Producers Releasing Corporation Producers Releasing Corporation (generally known as PRC) was the smallest and least prestigious of the 11 Hollywood film companies of the 1940s. It was considered a prime example of what was called " Poverty Row": a low-rent stretch of Gower St ...

. The remake was filmed quickly on a small budget, and was more horrific than the atmospheric original.Nicolella, Henry. ''Frank Wisbar: The Director of Ferryman Maria, from Germany to America and Back''. McFarland, Incorporated, 2018. pp. 113, 116.

References

Notes Bibliography * William K. Everson: ''Classics of the horror film'' (Citadel film books). Munich, 1979 * Christa Bandmann / Joe Hembus: ''Classics of German sound films'' (Citadel film books). Munich 1980 * Thomas Kramer: ''Lexikon of the German film''. Stuttgart, 1995. * Friedemann Beyer: ''More beautiful than death. The life of Sybille Schmitz'', improved edition. Munich, Germany * Brigitte Tast, Hans-Jürgen Tast: "The light so close to the shadow". From the ''Life of Sybille Schmitz Kulleraugen'', Visual Communication No. 46. Schellerten 2015.

External links

*
''Fährmann Maria''
Full movie with English subtitles at Deutsche Filmothek {{DEFAULTSORT:Fährmann Maria 1936 films 1936 horror films German horror films Films of Nazi Germany Films directed by Frank Wisbar German black-and-white films Films about personifications of death Films shot in Berlin 1930s German films Films scored by Herbert Windt