After a three-month trip, Willy, Hans and Kurt realise that they are broke. With the money they make from selling a car they open a garage. Lilian Cossmann, the daughter of a consul, is amongst their customers and all three friends fall for her. She chooses Willy, who doesn’t think she is sincere. The consul, in order to help his daughter, appoints Willy as head of one of his companies. One day Willy warily signs a document, believing that he is being fired. It turns out to be a marriage contract.

The novelty of the film consists in the rigour with which the plot has been tailored, almost paradoxically, to the requirements of operetta. An officer seizes property while dancing, a villa empties with a tap dance, a lawyer opens his mail singing and every object comes to life. Everything is set to music: speaking becomes singing and car horns become music. For Germany this implies the discovery of a new grotesque genre and the development of the style created by Lubitsch in Bergkatze. But Die Drei von der Tankstelle is important for something else: for the first time we are not presented with scenes to which a soundtrack has been added but with “staged melodies” or “music in images”.

Oskar Kalbus, Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst, vol. II, Altona/ Bahrenfeld 1935