| Große Freiheit Nr. 7 | |
| Director: | Helmut Käutner |
| Producer: | Hans Tost |
| Starring: | Hans Albers |
| Music: | Werner Eisbrenner |
| Cinematography: | Werner Krien |
| Editing: | Anneliese Schönnenbeck |
| Studio: | Terra Film |
| Distributor: | Deutsche Filmvertriebs (DFV) |
| Runtime: | 111 minutes |
| Country: | Nazi Germany |
| Language: | German |
Große Freiheit Nr. 7 (English: Great Freedom No. 7) is a 1944 German musical drama film directed by Helmut Käutner. It was named after Große Freiheit (grand freedom), a street next to Hamburg's Reeperbahn road in the St. Pauli red light district.
The film is also known as Port of Freedom in the United Kingdom.
It was shot at the Tempelhof and Babelsberg Studios in Berlin, and on location in Hamburg and Prague.
The film tells the story of the blond "singing sailor" Hannes Kröger (played by Hans Albers) who works in a St. Pauli club - address: Große Freiheit 7 - and falls in love with a girl played by Ilse Werner. But she prefers his rival Willem (Hans Söhnker) and Hannes returns to the sea.
Due to the threat of Allied bombing raids to Hamburg Harbour and to the Ufa studios in Berlin's Neubabelsberg and Tempelhof when it was made in 1943 (May to November), most of the movie was shot in Prague's Barrandov Studios by Helmut Käutner, as the first Agfa colorfilm by Terra. Portions were filmed aboard the four-masted barque Padua. For a scene with a boat trip in Hamburg harbour warships had to be covered up.
Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels was dissatisfied, and demanded many changes to make the film more "German", for instance by renaming the lead role from Jonny (as in Albers' earlier hit song "Good bye, Jonny") to Hannes. After a year of editing, the movie was banned anyway in Nazi Germany on 12 December 1944,[1] [2] and was only shown outside of the Großdeutsches Reich proper, with the premiere on 15 December 1944 in occupied Prague (then a Reichsprotektorat). It remained banned in Nazi Germany, opening on 6 September 1945 in Berlin's Filmbühne Wien after the Allied victory.