In a Berlin apartment house, Frida, the janitor's daughter, and Fritz, the owner's son, fall in love. Their decision to marry is thwarted by the class prejudices and moral beliefs of their parents. The realistic urban apartment-house setting of the couple's despair is countered with lyric moments on the rooftop overlooking a vast Berlin cityscape, where the lovers meet and dream of a freedom they cannot have. German film critic Siegfried Kracauer lists Das Erwachen des Weibes among the films known as the “Zille films,” named after a Berlin draftsman who portrayed crowded proletarian scenes and images of starving children and wretched workers. (The films, Kracauer points out, usually give one or two characters a “lucky break” and thus penetrate, on some level, the white collar world.)