Die Toteninsel (1955)

The Island of the Dead is the island of Lampur, a place for the damned in the middle of the South Seas. Only people with leprosy are shipped here, to be kept apart from the rest of humanity as outcasts. Among them are a singer who has lost her voice, an architect of churches, and a priest. When a ship carrying a group of visitors lands one day, something like human compassion enters the island for the first time: these guests want to stay on the Island of the Dead because of their strong personal ties to the people with leprosy. One of them is Frank Gordon, who is terminally ill and unsuccessfully begs his wife Maria to leave him again and return to the safety of Europe. There is no happy ending for him: fellow islanders who have mutinied stab him to death. Another visitor to Lampur is named Stefan. He has come here to search for his wife, from whom he was separated in Korea years ago. Stefan is astonished to find her again as the island doctor’s partner. In the end, Stefan and Maria are the ones who find one another here through their shared suffering, discovering in the process a reason to live more carefree lives. Despair and human greatness, decency and faith in God exist side by side on Lampur. But once the visitors have left the Island of the Dead, the island of the damned sinks back into oblivion, from which it had surfaced for a brief moment.