The Berliner

Movie

The Berliner

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.

Date: 12/31/1948

Rating: 7.4

Cast: Gert Fröbe, Tatjana Sais, Ute Sielisch, Aribert Wäscher, O.E. Hasse, Hans Deppe, Werner Oehlschläger, Erik Ode, Karl Schönböck, Herbert Hübner, Alfred Schieske, Rita Paul, Brigitte Mira, Georgia Lind, Clemens Hasse, Herbert Weißbach, Kurt Weitkamp, Franz-Otto Krüger, Erwin Biegel, Marianne Prenzel, Otto Matthies, Walter Strasen, Georg August Koch, Franz Pollandt, Walter Schramm, Valy Arnheim, Walter Bechmann, Alfred Beierle, Reinhold Bernt, Albert Bessler, Walter Bluhm, Erich Dunskus, Joe Furtner, Kurt Getke, Herwart Grosse, Karl Hannemann, Helmut Heyne, Hugo Kalthoff, Alfred Maack, Edgar Pauly, Hans Schille, Otz Tollen, Ilse Trautschold, Theodor Vogeler, Erik von Loewis, Werner Völger, Georg Völkel, Alexander Welbat, Eduard Wenck

Gert Fröbe