I have never thoroughly studied the cinemas of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Democratic Republic of Germany, the two states into which the nation was divided at the end of World War II, occupied respectively by the United States and the Soviet Union. We could talk about cinemas of foreign occupation, which, as in Japan and other states, were restricted, without freedom of expression, equally affected by the Cold War.
Despite my ignorance, it is not difficult to suppose that a film like «The Ship of Death» emerged in difficult times, a year after West Germany finally recognized the existence of East Germany, until the country was unified in 1990. While the Eastern products were almost absent, West German films sporadically showed up in our screens in the 1950-60s. They were bland, although not as puritanical as what arrived from Mexico, the US or Argentina. Films like «The Third Sex» were controversial; the trilogy of "Liane, the White Slave" excited us with its sexy stars, while Senta Berger in «Ramona» proposed a free structure of the musical.
Also from 1959 was the war drama «The Bridge» by Bernhard Wicki, which had a better reception than «The Ship of Death.» Both films were released when filmmakers such as Edgar Reitz and Alexander Kluge were already around, as forerunners of the "new German cinema" that produced highly significant works, signed by Fassbinder, Wenders, Herzog, Schlondorff, and others.
Fortunately, the W. A. Murnau Foundation rescued and restored «The Ship of Death» (co-produced with Mexico), the most outstanding work in the filmography of director Georg Tressler, based on the novel by B. Traven, a German who lived in Mexico, author of «The Treasure of the Sierra Madre» and «Macario», whose real identity, to this day, is unknown. The film starred the Berliner Horst Buchholz, as Phillip Gale alias Pippip, a young American sailor who, left without money or papers, ends up working on a decrepit ship used for smuggling.
According to literary critics, the novel by the enigmatic Traven is an accurate critique of capitalism. In the film, something similar is expressed through situations that reveal corruption, greed, and labor exploitation, on the one hand; and the bureaucracy and inefficiency of state organs and diplomatic missions, on the other. The plot is further balanced by the description of the friendship and solidarity between Pippip and the Polish sailor Lawski (Mario Adorf) and a short romantic interlude between Pippip and a French girl (Elke Sommer).
The drama reaches the expected outcome, with an ending too pessimistic for 1959. The films I remember from those years tended to sweeten the stories to generally give us happy endings. «The Ship of Death» does not and, although its conclusion could be considered an "open ending", the tragedy is eloquent.
