Ober, zahlen! (1957)

The head waiters Gustav and Franz are best friends and work together at a Viennese coffeehouse. Business is poor because modern espresso bars are taking customers away from the long-established coffeehouses. Only a few regulars remain loyal to the place, and not all of them can pay for their coffee promptly. The new busboy Fritz, the nephew of Frieda, a wealthy woman from Berlin, is also clumsy and cheeky, but he keeps his job because Gustav is in love with Frieda. Both head waiters dream of owning a small coffeehouse of their own. Franz might see his dream come true, since his hated brother, whom he once lent money to, is now paying it back. Franz’s wife is surprised to find herself holding a check for $20,000. Knowing that Franz would never accept money from his brother, she hides the windfall from him and confides in Gustav instead, asking him to tell Franz about the money. But when Gustav realizes that Franz would not take the news any better from him, he and Franz’s wife invest the money together: he buys part of the struggling coffeehouse for Franz and turns it into an espresso bar. Franz, meanwhile, teams up with Frieda, whom Gustav has not married simply because she has too much money. Frieda buys the coffeehouse. Shortly after the contract is signed, Frieda and Franz learn that Gustav is running the espresso bar. Since Gustav is supposed to take over the coffeehouse, they want to drive the espresso bar into bankruptcy. Gustav has the same plan for the coffeehouse, since Franz is supposed to become the owner of the espresso bar. Franz is now facing family troubles as well as professional ones: he believes that his wife is having an affair with Gustav, and that his daughter Mitzi has had an illegitimate child with the architect Kurt, or has become pregnant by a wealthy lover. The coffeehouse does well after a brief slump, as Franz and Frieda have turned it into a Viennese song café. But Franz eventually cuts short a musical performance because of the family problems, which are all based on misunderstandings but have already driven him to leave the marital home. It turns out that Mitzi has no child; for a while, she had been looking after a friend’s child. The meetings between Gustav and Franz’s wife were strictly business, concerning the purchase of the espresso bar. Both men now also realize that all along they had only been trying to ruin their own businesses. Franz is officially made manager of the espresso bar, while Gustav takes over the coffeehouse. They soon realize that they each prefer the other place, so they switch jobs again and work for each other as head waiters, just as before—even at the double wedding of Gustav and Frieda, and Mitzi and Kurt.