Unter den Brücken (1946)

mini|275px|Glienicke Bridge, circa 1928–1944 In the film, the protagonists Hendrik and Willy are constantly traveling with a barge (initially named “Liese-Lotte”), as part of a convoy of several barges, along the canals and rivers between Berlin and Rotterdam. The two young friends, independent barge owners who jointly own their vessel, live on it day and night. They have owned it for eleven years (since 1933 in the film’s timeline). From time to time, they have love affairs on shore, represented by a waitress at Café Meseritz and another woman (in the film, in Havelberg). After mixing up the women’s first names and getting an order wrong, the boatmen realize that superficial affairs are no good for them, given that their life aboard depends on the tugboat’s route. They decide to change things. From then on, both dream of lasting relationships and an engine of their own for their barge. One summer night, their convoy has moored at a bridge on the way toward Berlin (at Glienicke Bridge, between Potsdam and Berlin, in the film). From the barge, Willy notices a weeping young woman who seems about to throw herself into the Havel, and alerts Hendrik. She does not jump, but throws a ten-mark note from the bridge, which the two men fish out of the water. Since the last bus has already left, Hendrik offers the woman—who introduces herself as Anna Altmann—a place aboard the barge, after she asks him to give her money for a hotel room in Potsdam. He offers to take her to Berlin for the ten marks, as if she were traveling on a steamer; she has a small apartment there. She accepts and sleeps in the cabin, while the two boatmen sleep at the bow. During the night, a romantic scene unfolds as Hendrik explains the unfamiliar sounds aboard a barge to Anna, calling them “fine music to fall asleep to.” Before long, both men fall in love with her, each in his own way, since they are very different: one rather dreamy, the other jovial and cunning. During a mooring maneuver (at Berlin’s Schiffbauerdamm in the film), Hendrik and Willy decide to suggest that Anna stay aboard with one of them on their next trip to Rotterdam, so she can find out which of them she chooses. Willy has been appointed to make the offer, but tactlessly tries to confront her about where the ten marks came from. Anna refuses to reveal the source of the money, and a conflict ensues. Hurt, she leaves the moored barge. As she walks away, she tells the two men, standing aboard below, from a footbridge (the former Schlütersteg bridge in the film) that she earned the money by posing as a model. A nearly cheerful scene follows: without knowing it, Hendrik and Willy go to the same museum in search of paintings featuring Anna, and catch each other in the act in an exhibition hall. The two men then make an agreement: whoever wins Anna over must give up his share of the barge. Willy goes ashore and takes a job as a crane operator at one of Berlin’s inland ports (parts of the Osthafen in the film), while Hendrik continues carrying cargo to Rotterdam aboard the vessel, now with a new cabin boy. He once reaches the mouth of the Rhine and steers toward a breathtaking evening sky over the sea, where the camera suggests that another, happier world might lie in the distance. This is part of the visual language, unchallenged by film censorship, of a seemingly entirely apolitical Käutner film that nevertheless clearly avoids declaring Nazi Germany the best of all possible worlds. Meanwhile, Willy courts Anna. She tells him why she threw the banknote from the bridge: she wanted to get rid of a bad memory. Originally from Silesia, from the area around Görlitz, she had felt very lonely in Berlin. Wanting to be around people, she had taken a trip to Wannsee, where she met a painter and fell in love with him. When he asked her to pose for him, she went to his studio hoping he would return her feelings. But after one session as a nude model, all she received for her trouble was ten marks. Willy realizes that Anna sees him only as a good friend. He senses that she is in love with Hendrik, so he arranges an unexpected rendezvous for the two of them. Although it is not easy for Willy, he ultimately gives up his claim under the agreement and, from then on, travels with Anna and Hendrik aboard the barge, now named “Anna,” beneath the bridges.