Die ehrbaren Fünf (1989)

A small town in Saxony, shortly after the end of the Second World War: Toni, a former chimney sweep, intends to sell his uniform on the black market, but in the end he cannot bring himself to part with it. He meets the black-market trader Ginfizz and starts working with him: Ginfizz siphons off flour while working at a mill, and Toni sells it on the roof of an apartment building, out of the police’s sight. During a black-market raid, however, the young policewoman Gisela tracks him down. She finds his cash box containing 3,000 marks and chases him across the rooftops, but then has to be saved by him from falling. Her precinct commander assigns her to go to the market in civilian clothes and ask about flour so she can track Toni down. But Toni is no longer selling flour because he has a more lucrative deal: To avoid the mill owner Hartmann’s property being expropriated by the Soviet occupying power, Hartmann wants his machinery dismantled and transported away. Ginfizz is supposed to find him trucks and drivers. By chance, Toni drove trucks during the war and knows of a place in a forest near Plauen where five Wehrmacht trucks with wood-gas generators were hidden in the final days of the war. The two recruit three more drivers, known as the Master, the Tall One, and Eginhardt. They collect one million marks in advance from Hartmann for the trucks and deposit the money with the only person they trust, a pastor. They agree that they can retrieve the money only if they all come together. Gisela follows the gang on their way to the station and boards the train with them, where she strikes up a conversation with Toni. But this was not agreed with her precinct commander, who is worried about his young, inexperienced colleague, so at the next stop a railway policeman gets her off the train. The gang finds the trucks, repairs them, and sets off on the return journey. Along the way, they repeatedly have to take on legitimate transport jobs so as not to arouse suspicion: First they take a group of orphans to a home; then a forester catches them stealing wood in the forest, and they avoid punishment by delivering the wood to a pig-fattening farm. From there, they have to take 30 pigs to the slaughterhouse. Ginfizz wants to steal the pigs, but Toni convinces the others that it is a bad idea, since they would then no longer be able to deliver the trucks safely. They keep running into Gisela, who continues to follow them, though her colleagues and superiors do not take her seriously. She meets Toni in a nightclub and lets him flirt with her and invite her to dance so she can get information. It becomes increasingly difficult for her to remain professional and resist his charm. When Toni is able to prove with freight documents that the pigs were properly delivered, she herself starts to believe she was on the wrong track and dealing with legitimate hauliers. By the time Gisela returns to her precinct, the mill has already been emptied and the flour store looted, putting the town at risk of a food shortage. At the agreed time to collect the money from the pastor, only Ginfizz and Toni show up—the Master, the Tall One, and Eginhardt have been arrested, even though they were not involved in the flour theft. Toni wants to convince Gisela that the three are innocent, and tells her where Ginfizz is loading flour with other accomplices to take it to Berlin. Ginfizz is arrested there, whereupon the other three are released and go to the church to collect their money. They pretend to the pastor that Ginfizz is dead, to explain why they are not all present. Unfortunately, Gisela then arrives at the church with Ginfizz, who has confessed everything. To avoid being arrested, Toni “voluntarily” hands the money over to Gisela. The police give the gang one more chance: Ginfizz is held in pretrial detention, while the others remain free until the trial, provided they help get the mill—which has now become state-owned—up and running again. Even the mayor comes by and presents them with a letter of thanks from the town for their role in recovering the flour. And at the end, Gisela seems to have finally succumbed to Toni’s charm—or so it appears, at any rate, as the film ends with the two of them alone on the nightclub dance floor.