Gerhard Lamprecht
Anne Treibel owns a small house that is home to four women and one man, Martin, a badly injured war veteran. All the women are interested in Martin, but he knows that only Anne truly loves him. When Helga asks him to get a surgery that could save his life, he does it for Anne. Fortunately, the attention of the other three amorous women is diverted when three suitable men happen to show up!
After WWII, Berlin lies in ruins. For Gustav, Willi and their friends the rubble provides an adventurous, dangerous playground. Especially for Gustav, it helps pass the time, as he longs for his father's return from a POW camp. One day a stranger arrives, looking helpless and hopeless... Gerhard Lamprecht built his reputation during the 1920s and '30s with films like Emil and the Detectives (1931, script Billy Wilder) and socially-critical Berlin films based on the drawings of Heinrich Zille. In Somewhere in Berlin-his first postwar film, made just months after the cessation of hostilities-he portrays the people of the shattered city with precision and psychological realism.
Wolf Noltenius is a real globetrotter. Early on, this talented young man travelled far and wide, where he earned fame as a construction planner. He moved to Brazil; but one day, homesickness got the best of him. He spontaneously travelled back to his hometown to visit his brother Werner and his family. Wolf and Werner, who both went into the same profession, couldn't be any more different: the one is worldly and an experienced man-about-town; the other a small bourgeois.
Professor Dr. Burkhardt is a much celebrated surgeon. Obsessed with his career, he is always available when an unexpected operation comes up. That his personal life is suffering because of this obsession is something the successful doctor doesn't notice. His wife Vera, who, after the death of their three year old son, is always alone anyway, feels increasingly neglected. And the love, which she apparently isn't able to get from her husband, she seeks from Dr. Groone, her husband's assistant.
Alois, Wendelin, Schani and Franz operate an auto repair shop in Vienna. One evening, Alois fishes the suicidal Hannerl out of the Danube and takes her to live with him. The timid and taciturn woman soon disappears however, and with her, a large amount of cash out of the shop's cash register. A disappointed Alois wishes to forget about her, but his three friends look for Hannerl and the money. As it turns out, she's married to the smuggler Kerrylis, who forces her to take part in his business; that's why she tried to kill herself. When Kerrylis is found dead, Alois is suspected of being the murderer.
A love story between officer von Warp coming from a wealthy family and salesgirl Therese. When the social rules of the time would force the officer to resign from service in order to marry Therese the situation becomes tense.
During a journey of the "Ceder", the Captain, von Moltmann, disappears. It looks like an accident, but it could also have been murder. Attorney Dr. Burger and superintendent Störensen discover quickly that two of the crewmen hated the Captain: Chief officer Rohlfs suspects an affair between his fianceé Gerda and von Moltmann. Chief engineer Sparkuhl thinks the Captain has seduced his niece, who later committed suicide. The court decides that the Captain has gone overboard without anyone else's "help", but the rumors don't come to an end.
In 1812, during the French period, large parts of Germany are occupied by the troops of Napoleon. Several paramilitary Freikorps units battle the French forces, among them the Black Brunswickers led by the 'Black Duke' Frederick William of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. After the War of the Fifth Coalition, the Black Hussars are pursued by Napoleon throughout the country, but frequently take refuge with the noble-minded German people.
When a suspicious man bribes Emil with chocolate in return for a bundle of cash, the young lad thinks of a plan to catch him.
Else Riedel (Lissy Arna), locked out by her authoritarian father, seeks refuge with her boyfriend Hans. Complications threaten when Hans's roommate Max falls in love with her, but the situation is resolved: the three remain friends, and decide to form a music hall act. They want to ascend, but how? A way out beckons when a theatrical agent named Nevin enters Else’s life. He is played by Hubert von Meyerinck as a slick and oily villain, who oozes refinement; his experience behind bars is waved away with a silk scarf. He is cunning to the point of perfidiousness, but is not completely unsympathetic. He also embodies a new type - the scrounger.
If watching a fellow facing indifference/rejection in the slums of Berlin didn't convey enough pathos, Gerhard Lamprecht gathered much of the same crew from Die Verrufenen and turned his attention to the city's population of unwanted children for the heart-tugging Die Unehelichen, released the following year. The trio of foster children at the center of Die Verrufenen are survivors who use their own resourcefulness to get by when the kids' guardians and the system itself let them down.
The story of a Berlin tenement and its inhabitants. A silent drama by Gerhard Lamprecht.
It was not just the children who were treated badly by the wealthy Weimar republic. Robert Kramer is released from prison but struggles to adjust to civilian life. His father disowns him out, his wife has left him for another man. There is no work. He eventually arrives in a shelter for the homeless, and seeks salvation through Emma, a prostitute.
The director and co-writer Lupu Pick plays musician Erik Paulsson, who loses his beloved son after a peaceful yet critical poetry reading is raided by the tsarist forces. Paulsson, beside himself with grief, kills the officer responsible and is sentenced to life, which will mean 18 years in prison before he is free again. While he is inside, by a strange quirk of fate, his daughter Karin falls in love with writer Sebald Brückner, the son of the state prosecutor, who indicted Paulsson and is a staunch advocate of the death penalty. The conflict between the fathers does not impair the relationship of the young couple. However, when Sebald’s long-desired success on the stage is threatened by a vengeful theatre director who had sexually harassed Karin, he is enraged and kills the other man in a fight. The prosecutor now must face the blow of losing his own son to the death penalty.
