Die drei Scheinheiligen (1964)

After a traffic accident involving his truck, egg wholesaler Zackel is effectively bankrupt. But he thinks he is about to strike it rich when he uses a device he mistakenly takes for a Geiger counter to detect what he believes may be uranium on the property of Mia Schöner, a blonde hotelier’s widow. Together with his old friend Kleiner, a confectioner, and the businessman Itzenblitz, for whom Kleiner served as an orderly when Itzenblitz was a first lieutenant during the Second World War, he then forms a business consortium. The three men hope Zackel’s “discovery” will bring them very close to great wealth. The highly self-serving goal of the three hypocrites is to woo the landowner, Mrs. Schöner, and her daughters, the blonde Anita and the brunette Bettina—and, if possible, marry one of them straightaway. But the local geologist, Dr. Ebert, also seems interested in Mia Schöner. Anita soon takes a liking to the smooth-talking Itzenblitz, though she makes him wait a little. Bettina, meanwhile, has long been in love with Toni, the bar pianist, who returns her feelings. Before long, the three would-be husbands are at loggerheads, each believing that one of the others is trying to steal away the woman he has picked out as his prospective wife. The confusion grows when Toni comes to think that the geologist, Dr. Ebert, as his presumed future father-in-law, seems to have objections to him marrying Bettina. A little later, Toni learns that Kleiner is meant to become Mia Schöner’s husband, so he immediately picks a fight with him too. Eventually, to the great astonishment of geologists Ebert and Rothnagel, drilling begins in the Schöners’ garden—but no uranium is found. No wonder: Zackel had confused his egg tester, which he had sent in for repair, with the almost identical-looking Geiger counter. Mrs. Schöner gradually suspects that she and her daughters have fallen into the hands of three swindlers and crooks. Zackel’s search for uranium is over; he is utterly dejected and is also taken into police custody. But he has good luck in his misfortune: the drilling, which has not yet been stopped, brings a medicinal spring with a high iodine and sulfur content to the surface. In the end, two of the three hypocrites find happiness: Zackel finds his spring, and Itzenblitz finds his Anita. Only one is left empty-handed: Kleiner, the confectioner, who had already withdrawn from the consortium after the mix-up with the egg-testing device came to light.