Under the Bridges is one of a number of transitional endeavors—so called "carryovers" (Überläufer)—which, although produced during the Third Reich, were not premiered until after the war. Its narrative recalls Jean Vigo’s L’Atalante, just as its style brings to mind the poetic realism of the early Renoir’s Boudu and Toni. A romantic triangle unfolds on a small boat that wends its way up and down the Havel near Berlin. Käutner took leave of the artifice of studios and, while bombs continued to fall on the Reich, shot on location. His film also took leave of Ufa production values and departed from the Nazi era’s script-bound predilections, rediscovering the wonder of immediacy and physical reality and, in so doing, intimating new directions for a postwar German cinema.