Olle Henry (1983)

Henry Wolters, a former professional boxer whose career was destroyed by the Second World War, waits for a train alongside a great many people making trips to obtain supplies. Here in the station’s waiting room, it is already clear that cigarettes are the most important currency in this postwar period. When the train pulls into the station and everyone tries to get aboard, Henry can buy himself a place on the buffers between two carriages only by giving up half a pack of cigarettes. During the journey, he falls off the train—apparently not entirely by accident. That is when he meets Xenia, an entertainer who has made an old, decommissioned railway carriage nearby her home and takes him in. For the down-and-out, hopeless Henry, this is apparently the first place he has had to stay in a long time, because he has to sleep for several days before he wakes. Xenia looks after him like a mother, and when he comes round, she gives him plenty to eat. It is important to her to have a man with her who can protect her from the unwanted advances of pushy men. When she finds out that he used to be a boxer, she is convinced he can make a comeback and uses all her connections to get him back into the boxing business. Henry, too, begins to feel hopeful again, because he does not want to be supported by the woman he has fallen in love with. On his first attempt, he is hired as a carnival boxer, where the matches are fixed and the outcome is decided in advance. He cannot accept this, so they keep looking for a proper boxing stable. They find one, and Henry is put back into athletic shape there. Xenia continues to make sure he puts on weight. But Henry is no longer young or fast. In his first official bout, he knocks his opponent down in the first round, but the win cannot be declared because the gong sounds prematurely. The fight continues, and in the following rounds Henry suffers a terrible defeat that leaves him in a coma. After he is released from hospital, he is welcomed back with a small reception at the nightclub where Xenia worked. It is clear that he will be disabled for the rest of his life. But Xenia does not abandon him, even though another problem is already looming: their home, the decommissioned railway carriage, is to be taken away.