One of the last great German Expressionist films of the silent era, Joe May’s Asphalt is a love story set in the traffic-strewn Berlin of the late 1920s. Starring the delectable Betty Amann in her most famous leading role, Asphalt is a luxuriously produced UFA classic where tragic liaisons and...
A group of German infantrymen of the First World War live out their lives in the trenches of France. They find brief entertainment and relief in a village behind the lines, but primarily terror fills their lives as the attacks on and from the French army ebb and flow. One of the men, Karl, goes...
Drama based on a play by Friedrich Wolf. Hete is pregnant, hoping to have a family with her fiancé Paul. When the factory where she and Paul work sacks all striking workers, she tries to find a legal abortion. But there is only the illegal option - the eponymous cyanide.
While staying with her aunt at a fashionable spa, Else receives an unexpected telegram from her mother, begging her to save her father from debtor’s jail. The only way out, it seems, is to approach an elderly acquaintance in order to borrow money from him. Through this telegram, Else is forced...
"Tropical Nights" - The young violinist Alma comes to Simbali with an orchestra led by conductor Zangiacoma, hired for a series of performances at the Schomberg hotel. Both the conductor Zangiacomo and Schomberg are obsessed with Alma. One evening, when Alma is, as usual, forced to entertain the...
Following the Battle of Jena in 1806 as the French armies commanded by Napoleon overrun Prussia, a small detachment of Prussian troops take up position in a windmill and resolve fight to the last man to hold them off for as long as possible. Meanwhile, the windmill owner's daughter chooses to stay...
In this realistic, unsentimental portrait of Germany’s dire economic situation, a middle-aged payroll clerk loses his job due to technological advances and, unable to find another, descends into despair. The film’s director, Marie Harder, was one of only a few women directors of the time and...
