Wir lassen uns scheiden (1968)

Detailed description: Monika and Johannes Koch live with their ten-year-old son Manfred, also known as Manni, on Friedrichsgracht in Berlin, right in the center of the city. They have very different views on how to raise their son, and their day-to-day interactions are increasingly marked by arguments. When one of their disputes gets out of hand yet again one evening, Johannes leaves the apartment and moves in for the time being with his father, who is single and works in construction in central Berlin. Monika, who works as a typesetter at a print shop, and her husband, a pianist in the orchestra of a Berlin theater, decide to separate and agree that each of them will have the boy for four weeks at a time. They also hope to find out this way which of them is the better parent. Since Johannes is now living with his father, who has no piano and does not want one in the apartment, Johannes wants to practice at the home of a nice older piano teacher who lives nearby. The older lady turns out to be her young, pretty daughter, Maria, who is filling in for her mother. So confused is Johannes that he conceals his real purpose and introduces himself as a piano student. A little romance gradually develops between them. But Monika soon meets a nice young man, too. During an outing with Manni and his mother, he gives them a ride in his convertible. They also get to visit the construction site of the new Berlin TV Tower, where the convertible’s driver, Mr. Körner, is working. More outings follow, and Monika and Körner grow closer. Manni naturally tries to get the most out of the situation and plays his mother and father off against each other. He is particularly inventive when it comes to pocket money. Once he has saved enough, he assembles a bicycle from spare parts, which his father very much disapproves of when he catches him with it. Manni also increasingly gets out of hand in other ways. For example, he forges an exemption certificate so that his friend Mücke no longer has to go to after-school care. Once, he and Mücke are even caught smoking in the basement by his grandfather. His teacher also complains to his parents about his declining performance at school. Monika and Johannes have to realize that their experiment has failed, and conclude that only acting sensibly together can lead to a happy family life. At the end, Körner rings Marie’s doorbell and asks whether she can give him piano lessons. Synopsis: The authors of Aufbruch described the film’s content as follows: “This (...) feature film (...) with little Manni at the center of the story is not a children’s film, but a comedy aimed at parents and offering them an educational message. The young director clearly takes the side of her protagonist, who wants to divorce a man whose outlook on the world is that of an accountant: she sends her an attractive lover (‘I’m building the TV tower!’), who also gets along with the boy. And the husband, too, seems to take a fancy to a pretty piano teacher soon after moving out. But in the end, the boy goes astray, and the marriage is patched up—with Grandpa engineering the reconciliation—in favor of a stable upbringing in a nuclear family.”