AllMovie

After World War II had ended, Berlin's theater aficionados helped set up makeshift stages anywhere remotely feasible: in school auditoriums, converted cinemas, and even apartment buildings. In these difficult years after the war, coal or nails were sometimes accepted as an entrance fee for the performances held in the "theaters in ruins." Film clips from productions of Billy Wilder's "The Skin of Our Teeth," Sartre's "The Flies," Schiller's "The Parasite," and many other plays are shown in this documentary, along with interviews of artists such as Hildegard Knef, Klaus Schwarzkopf, and the author who wrote a book dealing with the period between 1945 and 1950 in Berlin, Hans Borgelt. Both the Soviet army and the Western Allied forces helped the Germans to build these theaters, though the brunt of work was shouldered by the people themselves.