Peter der Matrose Review: A Sad Silent Movie About a Guy on a Boat

I finally sat down to watch Peter der Matrose the other night.

Is it worth watching today? Well, only if you really like silent movies where people stare intensely at letters for a long time.

If you are looking for a fast-paced pirate adventure, you are going to be very disappointed.

People who love old German cinema or Reinhold Schünzel will probably get a kick out of it though.

The story starts out with Peter Fall, who is basically a fancy guy with a lot of money and a nice suit.

He thinks his life is perfect, but then he finds out the woman he loves is cheating on him.

It is one of those classic 'ruined man' stories that seemed so popular back in the 1920s.

Instead of staying and fighting for his money, he just decides to vanish into thin air.

He goes to sea to become a sailor, which I guess was the 1929 version of deleting all your social media and moving to a new city.

The transition from the ballroom scenes to the ship scenes is actually pretty interesting to look at.

One minute everything is shiny and expensive, and the next, everything is grimy and covered in salt water.

It reminds me a little bit of the vibe in As in a Looking Glass, where someone's whole world just falls apart because of a social scandal.

Hans Heinrich von Twardowski is in this, and he has such a strange, memorable face.

He looks like he is constantly about to burst into tears or maybe tell you a really dark secret.

There is this one scene where he is just leaning against the mast of the ship and looking at the horizon.

The camera stays on him for way too long, but in a way that makes you feel how lonely he is.

I think the director really wanted us to feel the emptiness of the ocean.

Reinhold Schünzel is great as always, even though he tends to act with his whole body in a way that feels a bit much sometimes.

You can tell he was a huge star because the lighting always seems to hit him just right.

The movie does get a bit slow in the middle part when they are just on the boat doing sailor things.

I actually found myself wondering if they really filmed this on a real ship or if it was just a big set in a studio in Berlin.

Some of the water looks a bit like it’s being splashed from a bucket off-camera.

But the graininess of the film actually helps hide some of those low-budget moments.

Renate Müller is also in this, and she has such a modern look for 1929.

She doesn't have a ton of screen time compared to Peter, but she makes an impression whenever she shows up.

The way she looks at him when he finds out the truth is actually pretty brutal.

There is no sound, obviously, but you can practically hear the heart breaking.

I noticed a weird mistake in one scene where a guy in the background is wearing a watch that looks way too modern, but maybe I just imagined it.

The movie isn't as grand as something like Beau Geste, but it has its own quiet charm.

It’s more of a character study than an epic journey.

I did find the title cards a bit hard to follow at one point because the translation I was watching was a bit clunky.

Sometimes the dialogue feels like it was written by someone who had never actually met a sailor in real life.

But that is part of the fun of watching these old silent films, I think.

You have to fill in the blanks with your own imagination.

The ending is kind of abrupt and left me feeling a little bit empty, but I think that was the point.

Peter doesn't really get a 'happy' ending, he just gets a different kind of life.

It is a very tired movie, if that makes sense.

It feels like a long sigh at the end of a very bad day.

If you are into that kind of melancholy atmosphere, you should definitely track it down.

Just don't expect any big action sequences or explosions.

It is just a man, his broken heart, and a very big boat. 🚢

I think I liked it more than I thought I would when it first started.

It is definitely better than some of the other stuff from that year that tries too hard to be funny.

Anyway, it is a decent way to spend an hour and a half if you want to feel a bit fancy and sad at the same time.