Berlin W.

Summary

A fever-dream of Weimar asphalt and cigarette haze, BERLIN W. drapes its melodrama across the capital’s bruised avenues like torn silk. Tzwetta Tzatschewa’s restless flapper drifts between Herbert Neuwald’s morphine-addicted war relic and Hans Albers’s swaggering con-man, each silhouette flickering between klieg-light glamour and gutter-shadow. Margarete Kupfer’s landlady keeps a ledger of sins; Frida Richard’s fading diva rehearses death scenes in a mirror cracked by bombs still echoing from 1918. As neon hoardings stutter over the Spree, the film stitches expressionist angularity to jazz-age syncopation: cabaret spotlights bleach faces into porcelain masks while backstage corridors exhale the sour whiff of desperation. When the final reel dissolves into a snowfall of visa stamps—exit permits, deportation orders, love letters never sent—the screen itself seems to surrender to history’s undertow, leaving only the echo of high-heels on cobblestones and the lingering suspicion that every close-up is a mug-shot taken by time.

Synopsis