Scampolo, ein Kind der Straße (1932)

Scampolo, an unemployed orphan girl, earns a few pennies by occasionally delivering laundry parcels for Mrs. Schmidt’s laundry. This time, she is supposed not only to take parcels to the “Pension Royal,” but also to collect overdue payments from Maximilian, an unemployed former banker who is now penniless. He sends her to his friend, the wealthy banker Philipps, but she only finds him after she has returned to the pension. Fascinated by Maximilian’s refined manner, she advances him not only the laundry money but also enough to pay for his room, pawning her most prized possession, a pair of cufflinks, to get the money. She tells Maximilian that she got it from Philipps. The banker, who happens to be visiting Maximilian’s room at the time, watches the deception with fascination. Scampolo not only worships Maximilian as a fairy-tale prince; she also wants to rouse him from his lethargy. First, she persuades him to open a language school so he can use the income to pay off his mounting debts. Even so, she lets both Gabriel, the pension’s waiter, and Philipps court her. When she answers the phone without permission in Philipps’s office and receives a stock tip, she has Gabriel pass it on to Maximilian. This enables the former banker to get back into business with his friend and become a rich man. Scampolo accompanies Maximilian, now Philipps’s partner again, to the airport with her future fiancé Gabriel to see him off. Maximilian is planning to fly to London for stock-market business and settle there as well. But in a chivalrous gesture, Gabriel tells Maximilian who he owes the stock tip to, and Maximilian finally understands how Scampolo feels about him. Without hesitation, he pulls the young woman onto the plane and takes her with him to London.