CCC Film

On September 16, 1946, Brauner founded CCC Film with Joseph Einstein, his brother-in-law, a black marketeer in Berlin, with a capital investment of 21,000 Reichsmarks in the American sector of postwar Germany. They had money, but no license from the American authorities, without which, it was impossible to produce anything. Two months later, Einstein quit the enterprise, leaving Brauner as sole owner.

The first CCC-produced film was the 1947 King of Hearts, followed in 1948 by partially self-autobiographical Morituri, directed by Eugen York. Morituri tells the story of a Polish refugee from a Nazi concentration camp. After a few theaters were damaged, the film was boycotted by other theaters and became a box office disaster, nearly ruining CCC Film and Brauner, and causing him to begin producing "normal films" in order to pay off his debt, as he told Time magazine in 2003. Postwar German audiences, struggling with devastated cities, homelessness and hunger, wanted escapist movies in the aftermath of World War II and Brauner filled that desire with a mixture of comedies, westerns, crime stories and the occasional drama. In 1949, Brauner finally received his license from the American authorities and CCC Film produced three successful films and moved to a former Nazi munitions and poison gas factory in Haselhorst, a locality in the Spandau district of Berlin. Brauner later said, "Out of the poison-gas factory I wanted to make a dream factory."

In the 1950s, CCC continued producing its proven mix of light-hearted fare and hired directors such as Carl Boese, Helmut Käutner, Robert Adolf Stemmle, Géza von Bolváry, Akos von Ratony, Kurt Neumann, Paul Martin and Erich Engel. Actors and actresses such as Heinz Rühmann, Maria Schell, Gert Fröbe, Klaus Kinski, Curd Jürgens and Romy Schneider were featured, some, like Kinski, making his film debut. It became one of the largest producers of postwar German-language films and helped to establish Berlin as a center of German film and television production.

CCC produced International Counterfeiters directed by Franz Cap in 1952. In 1955, the company produced The Plot to Assassinate Hitler, directed by Falk Harnack and co-written by Günther Weisenborn, about the failed July 20, 1944 attempt on Adolf Hitler's life. Other more challenging films from the 1950s were Die Ratten (directed by Robert Siodmak) adapted from a play by Nobel Prize winner Gerhart Hauptmann; Studentin Helene Willfüer (1956, directed by Rudolf Jugert) adapted from a book by Vicki Baum; and Vor Sonnenuntergang (1956, directed by Gottfried Reinhardt), also adapted from Hauptmann.

CCC produced 19 films in 1958 and began working on large productions. By the end of the 1950s, the company had built five additional film studios on its Haselhorst property, outfitting them with equipment for film and television production.