The Berliner | Telescope Film
The Berliner

The Berliner (Berliner Ballade)

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  • Germany
  • 1948
  • · 89m

Director Robert A. Stemmle
Cast Gert Fröbe, Tatjana Sais, O.E. Hasse, Hans Deppe, Karl Schönböck, Herbert Hübner
Genre Drama, History, Comedy

Long before he played the corpulent Goldfinger, German actor Gert Froebe was a scarecrow-skinny comedian. In Berliner Ballade, Froebe makes his screen debut as Otto, a feckless Everyman who tries to adjust to the postwar travails of his defeated nation. Stymied by black-market profiteers and government bureaucrats, Otto begins fantasizing about a happier life at the end of that ever-elusive rainbow. Director R. A. Stemmle doesn't have to strive for pathos: he merely places his gangly star amidst the ruins of a bombed-out Berlin, and the point is made for him. Filmed in 1948, Berliner Ballade was later released in the U.S. as The Berliner.

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