Zwei unter Millionen

Two Among Millions

Just before the Berlin Wall is built – friends Kalle and Paul work as drivers at an East Berlin wholesale market. Kalle moonlights as a waiter in a West Berlin bar. Together they smuggle Christine, who is fleeing East Germany, into the city's American sector, where Kalle arranges a place for her to stay above the bar. She quickly finds a job as a stenographer and their marriage seems to complete the happiness of the two. Kalle dreams of taking over the bar. But he doesn't have enough savings to buy out his boss. When a nouveau riche carpetbagger threatens to cut him out, Christine does something stupid…

In his screenplay, which won the German Film Prize, dramatist Gerd Oelschlegel made no bones about taking digs at the officious, illusory world of West Germany's economic miracle. Inspired by France's New Wave, the director used high-contrast exterior shots to juxtapose the glittering world of the Kurfürstendamm against the privations of the "little people" in the proletarian neighbourhood of Kreuzberg. Like Kalle, cinema audiences in the West also took the sceptical prophecy of his East Berlin friend to heart, "Not everything that glitters is gold. You'll find that out in time".

Source: 74. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)