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I was reading an essay about the Nazis' efforts to censor and control German cinema and came across a brief discussion about Wysbar's FÄHRMANN MARIA. Wysbar got into trouble with his 1933 film ANNA UND ELISABETH, which was about a contemporary small-town faith-healer-- the Nazis blacklisted the film for its supernatural elements, so when he made FÄHRMANN MARIA in 1936, he set it in a once-upon-a-time medieval past so that it would feel more fairy-tale-ish and so less threatening to the Nazis' strict definitions of reality. He was scrupulous about making sure that the script conformed to Nazi cultural regulations, and to cover his ass, he cast Nazi Party member Aribert Mog as the wounded youth that Maria helps to return to his homeland and in so doing beats Death who was stalking her ferry passengers. Apparently, these precautions worked because the Nazi version of the MPAA rating board said that FÄHRMANN MARIA was "artistically valuable and educational."

The author of the essay (William Moritz) says that Wysbar was actually subverting the whole thing by presenting an edgy, ambigous message that challenged the official Nazi Party line and "created an electrifying, thought-provoking experience that defies NSDAP principles." But Nazi critics were smarter than the government censors, and they attacked the film in the press as "decadently emotional and racially impure" (blonde, blue-eyed Mog falls for the dark-haired, dark-eyed Sybille Schmitz, who played Maria). Wysbar fled for the US soon thereafter.

EDIT: Bryan Senn has a nice capsule discussion of FÄHRMANN MARIA in the appendix of his Golden Horrors book that I read last night.



Incidentally, Sybille Schmitz also played Leone in Dreyer's VAMPYR. She killed herself in 1955; Fassbinder's VERONIKA VOSS is supposed to be based on Schmitz's sad life.