1 x 1 der Ehe (1949)

Everything in the life of lawyer Dr. Johannes Kellermann has to be done properly, everything has to be clearly coordinated and conform to the rules. He therefore does not believe that a marriage between two people can work if they have different ideas about how to live and about the basic principles of marriage. His future wife, actress Kitty Lenz, sees things completely differently. She is a modern woman with a career, fully engaged with life. Her ideas are far less antiquated than her husband’s, and she firmly believes that two people with different ways of life can be compatible, provided they share common ground on the fundamentals. He, on the other hand, expects, as a man of the Adenauer era, that the man of the house should go out to work while the woman stays at home and takes care of the children and their domestic comforts. On a radio programme about marital happiness, a relationship counsellor introduces the stubborn lawyer to three young couples, who are supposed to show him that he is mistaken in his antediluvian notion of a “harmonious and perfect marriage.” Johannes simply cannot believe it and dismisses the supposedly happy couples’ claims as complete nonsense and fraud. The three couples now set out to prove the opposite to the extremely conservative marriage-phobe by swapping partners with one another. This leads to all sorts of comical incidents, but in the end the right couples get back together, and Dr. Johannes Kellermann begins to reconsider his old-fashioned attitude. Once again, the guidebook “The A–Z of Marriage” has “cured” a disbelieving listener.