Wo ist Coletti? (1913)

Detective Jean Coletti managed to catch a bank robber within 48 hours. A Berlin newspaper argued that the criminal would have been found much faster if the press had been brought in promptly and a wanted poster published. Coletti then proposed hiding in Berlin for 48 hours and letting people search for him. He promised a reward of 100,000 marks to whoever found him during that time. He also had his wanted poster, with a photograph, put up everywhere. Coletti disguised himself as a street sweeper, while Anton the barber dressed up as Coletti. The amateur investigators fell for the fake Coletti. A chase led across the open upper deck of a bus, through Berlin’s Tiergarten, to the airfield, and all the way into an airship. There, a formidable lady grabbed him and dragged him to the newspaper’s editorial office. They soon realized, however, that he was not the man they were actually looking for. Next, a dog was put on Coletti’s trail. He was carried in a basket into the dressing room of Coletti’s girlfriend, the variety-show dancer Lolotte. Coletti, disguised as a woman, attends an invitation from a count to Lolotte, as does the count’s elderly father. They visit a movie theater, where a newsreel about the hunt for Coletti is shown. They spend the final half hour of the search period together in a private room. Coletti is finally tracked down five minutes after the 48 hours are up, but he has won his experiment.