Fährmann Maria

Fährmann Maria (translates to Ferryman Maria) is a 1936 German horror/occult film by Frank Wisbar from the year 1936. After the old ferryman of a small village dies while transporting The Stranger, a homeless woman arrives and takes over his duties. The next evening, a wounded man appears and asks to be ferried across. She does more, hiding him from pursuers and nursing him back to health. Gradually, she falls in love. But he was not meant to live, and soon The Stranger appears on the shore. This is, she quickly realizes, Death itself, and she refuses to conduct him across. The drifter, Mary, instead seeks to outwit the Grim Reaper when he then appears in the village. She hides in, naturally, a church, before leading him into the marsh she now knows. He sinks while she knows where solid ground is. As was the theme with supernatural German films of the period, such as Der Student Von Prag and Der Mude Tod by Fritz Lang, love won out over supernatural forces. It arrived in the United States in 1938, distributed in the United States by Casino Film Exchange.