Your Life Guards

Two inspiration sources appear clearly: contemporary American gangster movies and Alfred Döblin’s novel Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929).

Otto, a feckless Everyman, tries to adjust to the postwar travails of his defeated nation. Stymied by black-market profiteers and government bureaucrats, Otto begins fantasizing about a happier life at the end of that ever-elusive rainbow.

Poldi Sonnleitner had actually wanted to trade the local mountains for the vastness of the open sea. That’s why he had become a sailor. But during a visit home, everything suddenly changes for him, because all he wants is to stay with his girlfriend Dorle, the grocer’s daughter. When he learns that she has long been promised to the village blacksmith Domini—once Poldi’s best friend—he sets out on a life-threatening mountain trek in a fit of rage. As fate would have it, only his friend Domini can save him.

As a gang of classy jewel thieves hop from one European country to another, an engineer rescues a woman from their clutches.

An Italian engineer who had made a strategically important invention to ward off enemy aircraft is killed in a robbery. As the plans have presumably fallen into the hands of spies, secret service captain Bergall is given the task of recovering the papers. Bergall initially adopts a false name and appears as Mr. Gran, whom nobody knows. Under this name, he rents a room in the Hotel Danieli in Venice and makes the acquaintance of the shipowner's daughter Viola Dolleen. With her help, he is able to eliminate Captain Gordon, who is also interested in the plans. When Gran learns that the plans are now in the possession of the art dealer Tschernikoff, who wants to sell them to Gordon, he immediately travels to Rome, visits the art dealer Titian and pretends to be Gordon. In the art dealer's remote villa, events come thick and fast...

A stressed American millionaire is advised by his doctor to take some downtime and rest in the German countryside. The tycoon is so impressed that he buys an estate and turns it into a resort where other businessmen can take holidays from their stressful lives. In the process he falls in love with the estate's former owner.

The painter Hans Hauser falls head over heels in love with the "Black Forest girl" Bärbele Riederle. He travels to her home village and soon the two realize that they are made for each other.

Cafe owner Paul Perlacher is a real pig: not only are his daughter and sister Trude embarrassed constantly by his disgusting behavior, but his tenants are subjected to every legal trick under the Sun to get them to move out. Nevertheless, Amalie Hartning's a stubborn woman and can take care of herself well when it comes to her tyrannical landlord. If that weren't enough for Paul, his daughter's gone and fallen in love with the nephew of this pain in rear! And when Paul's ordered to jail by the courts, that really is the last straw.

American billionaire George B. Stefenson is on a business trip through Europe when, due to his heavy workload, he suffers a heart attack. The doctor called to his aid, Dr. Hartung, strongly advises him to take a three-month break—in other words, to take a “vacation from himself.” After some hesitation, Stefenson agrees and also commits to funding the project, since an institution offering such a program has so far existed only as a dream in the doctor’s mind. As part of the “vacation from the self,” all participants are given a new first name and work clothes so they do not have to reveal their true identities to any of the other residents.