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.
Genres:
Gert Fröbe as Otto Normalverbraucher
Tatjana Sais as Ida Holle
Ute Sielisch as Eva Wandel
Aribert Wäscher as Anton Zeithammer
O.E. Hasse as Der Reaktionär
Hans Deppe as Emil Lemke
Werner Oehlschläger as Raisonneur
Erik Ode as Stimme
Karl Schönböck as Rundfunkreporter
Herbert Hübner as Herr Bollmann
Alfred Schieske as Herr Schneidewind
Rita Paul as Sängerin
Brigitte Mira as Dirne
Georgia Lind as Dirne
Clemens Hasse as Pfarrer
Herbert Weißbach as
Kurt Weitkamp as
Franz-Otto Krüger as
Erwin Biegel as
Marianne Prenzel as
Otto Matthies as
Walter Strasen as
Georg August Koch as
Franz Pollandt as
Walter Schramm as
Valy Arnheim as
Walter Bechmann as
Alfred Beierle as
Reinhold Bernt as
Albert Bessler as
Walter Bluhm as
Erich Dunskus as
Joe Furtner as
Kurt Getke as
Herwart Grosse as
Karl Hannemann as
Helmut Heyne as
Hugo Kalthoff as
Alfred Maack as
Edgar Pauly as
Hans Schille as
Otz Tollen as
Ilse Trautschold as
Theodor Vogeler as
Erik von Loewis as
Werner Völger as
Georg Völkel as
Alexander Welbat as
Eduard Wenck as
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