A classical art junk dealer and an almost bankrupt hairdresser who unexpectedly makes an inheritance go hunting behind thirteen chairs from which of a 100,000 DM contains which the rich aunt has hidden there.

1948 film

At the Olympic games in Berlin 1936 Inge Wagner falls in love with Luftwaffenleutnant (Airforce Lieutenant) Herbert Koch. They want to marry, but he receives orders to go to Spain - incognito, without permission for any contacts to his friends and relatives. Inge is still waiting for him. After the beginning of WW II, German radio starts broadcasting the "Wunschkonzert für die Wehrmacht" - a program made of wishes from the soldiers. He hears the song, he wanted to hear, and so does Inge. A friend of Inge, who hopes she is willing to marry him, comes to the same squadron where Koch flies. Koch and Inge arrange a date at a Hamburg restaurant, but he and Ilse's friend are shot down the day before. In the hospital Koch finds out, that he and his friend love the same girl. He thinks they are already engaged and is willing to give her up.

In postwar Vienna, Austria, Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, arrives penniless as a guest of his childhood chum Harry Lime, only to learn he has died. Martins develops a conspiracy theory after learning of a "third man" present at the time of Harry's death, running into interference from British officer Major Calloway, and falling head-over-heels for Harry's grief-stricken lover, Anna.