The Dead Ship (film)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The death ship |
 | |
| Country of production | Federal Republic of Germany , Mexico |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1959 |
| length | 93 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Georg Tressler |
| script |
Hans Jacoby , Georg Tressler, Werner Jörg Lüddecke |
| production |
Dietrich von Theobald for UFA, Berlin Producciones José Kohn SA, Mexico City |
| music | Roland Kovač |
| camera | Heinz Pehlke |
| cut | Ilse Voigt |
| occupation | |
| |
The Dead Ship is a German-Mexican film from 1959 by Georg Tressler . The black and white film based on the novel by B. Traven was premiered on October 1, 1959 in the Hamburg City Cinema.
action
In the port district of Antwerp . When the New Orleans-born seaman Philip Gale left the bed of a prostitute that morning with whom he spent the previous night, she not only stole his money, but also his nautical book . Gale notices this loss, which later has tragic consequences, when he comes to the quay from which his ship had left unplanned a few hours earlier. Now Gale is without papers, which he absolutely needs if he wants to hire on another ship. The Belgian police then deport Gale as a nameless foreigner to the northern neighboring country . Even the American consul in Rotterdam, to whom Gale goes in his desperation, cannot help him, especially since he does not really believe Gale's story. The US diplomat advises him that it could take two months before his true identity can be established. Gale doesn't want to wait that long, so he hitchhikes south to be able to hire in a port city where you don't ask for your papers.
On the way in France he meets blonde Mylène, who lives in a small house with her mother in a sparsely populated landscape. Mylène quickly takes a liking to the young man and invites him to his home, where Gale first takes a bath and is cooked. The next day, Gale, who is also beginning to feel for her, takes leave of Myléne with a heavy heart and continues his journey by train.
In the next port, the ship's trimmer spoke to Lawski Gale, and a little later the second officer and engineer of the Yorikke , Dils, persuaded him to hire a ship from this soul seller. Gale was lured by the statement that the ship was loading general cargo for Boston - Gale's dream destination. The Yorikke already looks like a pile of junk at first glance. Hardly on board, there is already a confrontation with Dils and the captain, as Gale feels duped and the ship is by no means going to Boston for the foreseeable future. Gale is used in the boiler room and has to shovel and burn coal - a heavy job that is as dirty as it is exhausting and sweaty. The first friction soon broke out on board. Gale keeps clashing with the stoker Martin in particular. Only with Lawski can he now and then exchange a few frank words. When the two starved men poke at the tinned plum jam stored in the hold, they discover that the jam is only used as a camouflage: rifle cartridges are smuggled into the cans.
At the same time, the two ship officers crouch with the skipper in the captain's cabin. In order to get the sum insured for the ship and cargo, the captain plans to set the Yorikke aground at the next opportunity. When the first officer, Statter, does not want to participate in the villainy, since he assumes that his people should be ruthlessly scuttled at the same time in order to avoid annoying witnesses, the captain orders that Statter must die. And so Dils and the boatswain throw him overboard the following night after a brief scuffle on the high seas.
A number of sailboats approach the ship near the African coast. The cargo that the men want to unobserved by port authorities and other official bodies on board the Yorikke are the boxes with ammunition. In the next pint in a southern port town, Gale meets the barmaid Shaba, to whom he complains. She gives him the tip to see a certain Ballard, a passport forger. Gale doesn't have to pay anything, explains Ballard. But, in order to get a passport for himself and his buddy Lawski, Ballard demands that Gale murder a man who is deeply hated by Ballard. Gale sees himself unable to do so and instead sells the brand new revolver given to him for the murder. With no hope of ever getting away from the lonely port on the edge of the desert, Gale and Lawski return on board the Yorikke . Soon a police boat approaches the ship and the captain orders full speed. The coal shippers in the boiler room do their best, but there is a disaster and one of the two stokers gets badly scalded. The coal trimmer Paul selected for repairs in the steam-soaked boiler room was able to fix the accident, but was killed in the process.
In the coming night, according to the will of the captain, the Yorikke should go under. The skipper therefore lets the boiler run at full steam and steers the ship precisely onto a reef. The men who are currently below deck and in the boiler room at this point are in dire straits. Only Gale can escape from the boiler room to the upper deck of the dead ship, which is badly tilted. In the ensuing chaos, Martin kills Dils, while he and the boatswain are immediately shot by the captain. The captain, in turn, falls backwards into the lower deck and breaks his neck in the process. Only Gale and Lawski survive. In heavy seas, the wreck eventually breaks apart and sinks. The two men save themselves on a large wooden plank - the last thing that is left of the Yorikke . After a day on the swaying underground floating around in the wide sea, Lawski is tormented by delusions and jumps into the sea in search of the long-sunk Yorikke , which devours him. Philip Gale, who desperately tried to prevent him, is left alone, drifting in an infinite sea.
Production notes
The death ship was freely designed based on the novel of the same name by B. Travens . Filming began on May 4, 1959 and ended on August 8 of the same year. The film was shot on European coasts and at sea: Antwerp , Málaga , Almería , Alicante , Barcelona and at Staberhuk on the island of Fehmarn.
The later television director Eberhard Itzenplitz assisted Georg Tressler, and Wolfgang Treu assisted the cameraman Heinz Pehlke . The film structures were designed by Emil Hasler and executed by Walter Kutz . The main actor Horst Buchholz left Germany after this film and played in foreign language films for the next decade and a half. He received 200,000 DM for his role, an extremely high sum for the time.
criticism
On page 87 of the issue of Der Spiegel on October 21, 1959, it was to be read: “Although the Ufa authors have enriched the Traven bestseller with three - flashily short - amours, the cinema version of the literary world success produced by director Georg Tressler proves to be. as unsatisfactory. The portrayal of the ordeal of a seaman without a passport and papers, which is captivating in the novel, lacks motor action in the film. There are very few moments of tension between the cumbersome introduction and the depressing end. The batches with distinctly male physiognomies, including Mario Adorf and Helmut Schmid, act so impressively that the main hero Horst Buchholz in this company looks like an employee of the Alsterschiffahrt. "
“Unlike Traven (who supposedly attended the premiere incognito), the film relied less on atmospheric density and philosophical perspectives than on speed and action. This time the film is clearly on the side of the unadjusted, the adventurer. Even if the path of the seaman, whose papers are stolen by a prostitute and who ends up in illegality, on the 'Yorikke', a shabby smuggler's boat, comes to a fatal end, the world of the 'normal' will come to an end with hers petty-bourgeois narrowness, their moral prejudices and their bureaucracy as a negative counterworld. The dramaturgy also takes the side of the adventurer. Because the events occur with the same fatal unpredictability with which the hero struggles through life. The story dispenses with all intrigues; just as accidentally as the seaman (Horst Buchholz) is driven into illegality, just as accidentally does he meet the girl he falls in love with; the possibility of hiring on the 'Yorikke' is as unpredictable for him as its eventual capsizing leaves the crew to their blind fate. The gripping final sequence is a highlight of the German post-war film insofar as intact studio technology was presented here, which would later be unparalleled. However, there are still doubts as to whether Traven's quasi existential novel could really be translated into realistic decorations. "
In Films 1959/61 it is said: Traven is an excellently stylized adventure novel with a socially critical note. In the film, despite the strenuous realism and technical effort, it's just a brisk draw .
The Protestant Film Observer comes to the following conclusion: Strong images, but also continued very harsh film adaptation of the well-known novel of the same name (...).
Martin Prucha wrote in Reclam's Lexikon des Deutschen Films (1995) that by moving the plot from the period after the First World War to the 1950s, the socio-critical force of the original was partially lost. Nevertheless, it is an adventure film full of atmosphere.
Web links
- The Death Ship in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The death ship at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Olaf Möller: Tornness as a possibility: Georg Tressler's Das Totenschiff. In: Robert Buchschwenter and Lukas Maurer: Halbstark - Georg Tressler: Between order and author. Vienna 2003, page 103
- ↑ The death ship in Der Spiegel
- ^ Films 1959/61. Critical notes from three years of cinema and television. Handbook VI of the Catholic film criticism. Düsseldorf 1962, p. 172.
- ↑ Evangelischer Presseverband München, Review No. 668/1959
- ↑ Reclams Lexikon des Deutschen Films ed. by Thomas Kramer, Stuttgart, Reclam, 1995, p. 309