"Berlin - Ecke Schönhauser" is an East German movie from 1957, so this one will have its 60th anniversary next year. The director is Gerhard Klein and he also wrote the script together with Wolfgang Kohlhaase, probably a much more familiar name due to his long contributions to the German film industry. Here we have a movie that is fairly short, does not even make it to 80 minutes and tells the story of a group of teenagers. Unfortunately, I found none of them really interesting and the characters basically all seemed interchangeable. The acting was very mediocre and I am not surprised I don't know any of the actors from anything other than the equally mediocre Edgar Wallace films. The script has a decent moment here and there in terms of dramatic storytelling, but not enough either. It is pretty telling that this film is today probably considered one of the more known and famous movies from the GDR and it is still nothing special. Great movie-making may certainly not have been the country's strength. I also don't believe that it has to do with that film being black-and-white still despite color easily being on the forefront already around that time. It is a just an accumulation of too many sub-par factors that play together here. I give this one a thumbs down. Not recommended.
