In a small town a bag with delicate letters disappears. Many of the residents are worried about their written messages. A clever sculptor uses the opportunity to play a prank.
Fernand has escaped from prison and finds shelter in the traveling circus Barlay, where his former wife Flora works as a predator trainer. Their son, now grown up, Marcel is an art rider and does not know that Fernand is his father. Marcel loves Yvonne, the daughter of director Barlay. He is...
Klaus is a young man in post-war Berlin. He is drawn to his friend Manfred and, under the encouragement of their acquaintance, Dr. Winkler, explore the underground world of gay clubs and electronic music. His family begins to learn of his other life and do everything they can to set him straight.
The double standards of a social class, which pontificates with big words what is proper and improper in the world of morality, while in its heart thinks very differently and acts accordingly.
His grandpa gives the orphan boy Robbie a foal that they call "little brother". The boy loves the animal and wants to train it as a racing horse - but then his grandpa dies. Robbie's sister isn't old enough to care for themselves, so they get a guardian who decides to sell all the horses. Robbie...
The engineer Wolff Benningsen (Volker von Collande), a self-assured and über-obnoxious jingo jerk meets the young art student Vika von Demnitz (Leny Marenbach) while climbing in the Alps. One get's the idea that he would like to knock her over the head with a club and drag her to his cave but...
Der Herrscher (The Sovereign) was based on Before Sunset, a play by Gerhart Hauptmann. The great Emil Jannings stars as Mathias Clausen, a self-made businessman who is forced to do a great deal of soul-searching when his wife unexpectedly dies. Determining to start life anew, he falls in love with...
The setting is Lugano (Switzerland), where an apparently very important world conference takes place. The film tells the story of the young Kitty (Hannelore Schroth), who works as a manicurist at the Eden Hotel, and who in the course of events gets to know both a young journalist (Christian...
When Bartos, the director of the Odeon variety theater, cancels an artist at short notice, he hires the Terrys out of necessity, whose parents were successful variety artists, but who had not yet received an engagement themselves. Both are supported by Tobs, a friend of their parents. While blonde...
This film is a fascinating showcase for Emil Janning's theatrical play. He's a gentle school teacher who believes in his boys and is easily fooled about all things, while the other town officials want him dismissed. Curiously it's very hard to see what the film is exactly aiming for. Disaster...
A German expedition is in the African jungles on an unidentified misson. During this mission one of the German explorers, Thoren, is attacked and captured by the local natives called the Botos.
Escaping her school teacher life, a lady marries a British military doctor who takes her to Malaysia. But realizing there that the marriage isn't working, she turns to an Oriental prince instead.
Vienna is celebrating New Year’s Eve 1913/14. It is the year, which will see the outbreak of the First World War. In Hotel Sacher, the mood is excellent; and although the political atmosphere is charged, there’s an undercurrent of hate and intolerance in the air. It is with this background...
After the two vagabonds Robert and Bertram flee from prison, they get to know the innkeeper’s daughter Lenchen at the “Silver Swan” Inn. Because her father is in desperate need of money, Lenchen is to marry the creditor Biedermeier instead of her beloved military recruit Michel. In order to...
Otto Friedrich Dennert is a celebrated veteran of the Essen police force. While investigating a series of killings of women he reaches retirement age. The case is taken over by a new team, including Dennert's son Harry. Convinced that they have arrested the wrong person, Dennert begins...
In the middle of the 19th century, almost one in three women who gave birth died of puerperal fever. The Hungarian doctor Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis also observed these terrible occurrences in his clinic in Vienna. He came to the conclusion that it was primarily the unhygienic conditions in the...
In a fantasy European principality, the headstrong and beautiful Princess Ingrid falls in love with a handsome officer, but dismisses him in a fit of temperamental overreaction when she learns of an alleged liaison.