The Captain from Kopenick

Wilhelm Voigt is a shoemaker who has spent years in prison. On his release he needs a residence permit to get work, and work to get a residence permit. Prussian bureaucracy leaves him wedged between those two doors. Then one day he sees an officer's uniform in a second-hand shop, puts it on, and discovers how much a uniform can do. Soldiers he meets in the street obey him without a question. Helmut Käutner adapted the film from Carl Zuckmayer's 1931 play, which is built on something that actually happened in 1906. Heinz Rühmann plays Voigt. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for best foreign language film. It goes straight at Prussia's reverence for the uniform.