Film

Scripted by a young Billy Wilder, People on Sunday follows five young Berliners—all amateur actors, playing members of their own professions. On Sunday morning, a taxi driver fails to rouse his girlfriend from their basement apartment, so he sets out on an escapade with his friend, who brings along a dark-haired movie extra and a blonde salesgirl. As affections shift, scenes of the group swimming, picnicking, napping, and more alternate with long documentary passages showing Berlin at leisure.

Department store shopgirl Eva Mayer (McLaren) has a problem: Her only pair of shoes is falling to tatters and she barely earns enough to feed her unemployed parents and three sisters, much less buy some new kicks. What’s a girl to do? Why, go on a date! After reluctantly accepting an invitation from a guy named Cabaret Charlie, Eva stumbles home the next morning in a new pair of shoes, leading her scandalized mother to conclude that she’s prostituted herself for fashion. Directed by America’s first female film mogul, Shoes is a telegram from a time when the line between a date and a trick was, well, tricky.