Jean Coletti, famed detective, has managed to catch a bank robber in just 48 hours. But a Berlin newspaper claims that the crook would have been caught even faster if the public had been involved in the manhunt. Coletti promptly announces that he will hide in Berlin for 48 hours and pay a reward of 100,000 marks to anyone who tracks him down during this time. In addition, he has a wanted poster with his photo posted everywhere. While the detective disguises himself as a street sweeper, his hairdresser Anton disguises himself as Coletti.
Anton strolls through the city, visits pubs and cinemas and has many adventures. Finally, he is recognized and apprehended by a female passenger on a bus. But it quickly turns out that he is not in fact the wanted man. Even a sniffer dog that is set on Coletti does not help. Time is running out as the deadline looms ever closer...
WO IST COLETTI? – WHERE IS COLETTI? (1913) is the first German movie to document urban Berlin during the imperial era, from its streets and means of transport to the cinemas and vaudevilles: a remarkable pioneering achievement for the time, when films were mainly produced in the studio due to the cumbersome equipment required. The comedy was a hit with the public. On April 5, 1913 the film magazine “Lichtbild Bühne” wrote about its director Max Mack, a co-founder of popular cinema in Germany: “In our dreary, gray, theory-ridden times, when every day brings us new tax burdens, increases in the price of food, declarations of political bankruptcy, bank failures, manifestations, and other such lovely things, there is this divinely blessed artist who knows how to shoo the worry lines from our foreheads.”
