In a Cool Ground

Old Meiseken, a gingerbread baker, has been dead for three years, but his bosses don’t know that. They’ve been paying him his pension all this time, unaware that his former landlords have been cashing the checks. When, one day, the assistant head of the bakery, Tony, pays a visit to Meiseken’s place to get a hold of an old recipe, someone’s got to play the part of Meiseken! The fraud blows up in the landlords’ faces; but in the end, Tony gets the recipe book and even a new bride.

This is essentially a "Kraft durch Freude" propaganda film though the organization is never mentioned. A company's three day outing might very well be the last because bankruptcy is just around the corner. The people on the trip have all their individual problems and wishes, too. This episodic film might sound quite promising considering the basic idea but its script is determinedly optimistic and leads everything and anything to a happy end. The dramatic parts are finished in a rather implausible way, the comedic are terribly predictable. There's a badly misjudged singing scene in the bus, some bavarian shtick, the Regensburger Domspatzen are singing in Augsburg and so on...

Michael saves his little girlfriend from drowning. He wants to marry his childhood friend.

On Christmas Eve in 1818, parish assistant Joseph Mohr is on the road. Despite the freezing cold, he has just blessed a poor farming family and is now on his way back to Oberndorf near Salzburg. Once home, the assistant pastor puts his thoughts into a poem on this quiet night. His friend, the teacher and organist Gruber, is asked to compose a melody for it. The birth of the world's most famous Christmas carol.