Schwarzfahrer/Recap
The movie first introduces several side plots of different passengers of the tram, who happen to take it on the same time:
- A black hipster, who takes leave of his (white) pal to drive home with the tram.
- An old lady with some very stereotypical and offensive views about foreigners in general.
- A young businessman, whose motorbike breaks down, forcing him to take the tram without a ticket (the real Schwarzfahrer of the story).
- Two (white) teenage girls, who start flirting with two turkish teens in the tram station.
- A (white) mother with a rather active child, who wanted to wash his hands in a (symbolically) dirty black puddle. The boy is the closest witness to the story's centre.
- An older gentleman, who is seen openly agreeing with the old lady.
- A (white) punk, who startles some other passengers.
The black guy enters the tram, and sits on a free seat next to an old lady. The old lady, who first chose to ignore him when he asked if he could take the seat in the first place, starts to insult and berate him, that he doesn't have any manners to take the seat just like that. She then starts to rave about how his mannerisms are a product of his race.
She seems to talk less to the black and more to the remaining passengers, who happen to sit around them. The mother and child, for instance, sit opposite of them.
The old lady then continues to complain (in a very rhetorical style) that they all came here in the first place, and that nobody invited them (which is not true in the historical sense; foreigners were systematically engaged in post-WW 2 Germany). Throughout her ravings, hardly any other passenger reacts to her complaints, either positively nor negatively, apart from another, equally demented passenger, and one of the turkish teens, who tries to shut her up. When she later states that those foreigners are lumpy, lazy, and rude, the (white) punk ironically enters the tram. Some of the guests notice him, the old lady notwithstanding.
She goes on and on about how horrible blacks and others are ("...They should at least have their names changed when they come over here, or else you can't tell them apart at all. What's more, they smell awful. But there is no law against that!").
After a while, a conductor comes to check tickets, much to the displeasure of the fare dodger. But first he must pass the old lady and the black man. At this point, the black man, who has tried hard to ignore the old lady, seizes an opportunity: He takes away her tickets and gulps them down. The old lady is hysterical when the conductor arrives ("That nigger just ate my tickets"), and he naturally doesn't believe her obviously racist story ("That's the stupidest excuse I have ever heard!"), so he takes her off the tram.
None of the other passengers, who were silently listening to her antics, intervenes or reacts (except for the little child, who starts grinning). Apart from that, the African's action saved the real fare dodger as well.