Gert Fröbe
Otto Normalverbraucher
Tatjana Sais
Ida Holle
O.E. Hasse
Der Reaktionär
Hans Deppe
Emil Lemke
Karl Schönböck
Rundfunkreporter
Herbert Hübner
Herr Bollmann
Drama
Comedy
History
The Berliner
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.
