A Song Goes Round the World

Spring Awakening

Moritz Stiefel faces expulsion due to poor marks. When he is caught with an essay titled “Shame and Lust”, he is indeed kicked out – instead of classmate Melchior Gabor, who actually penned it. Gabor was drawing on his experiences with neighbourhood girl Wendla. Then Wendla turns up pregnant. Stiefel descends into despair ... Exploitation between Eros and Thanatos in this “sexual tragedy of youth” based on Frank Wedekind’s play. Setting the film in the 1920s provided a chance to explore “modern” youth culture, complete with cigarettes, jazz music, the gramophone, and a goodly bit of alcohol. Richard Oswald, a master of films of manners and young sex beginning in the 1910s, fully explores the temptations of the youthful body, even early childhood flirtatiousness. At the same time, with his target audience in mind, the film laments the bigotry and double standards of the adult world.

Figures of the Night

Thomas Bezug, the richest man in the world, is a solitary, domineering and cruel cripple, who hardly can move on his crutches. He dwells a fanatical love for his son, whom he holds like a monkey in a cage. His servants are defaced dwarfs. His secretary is trying to steal Bezugs assets. These are the night people.

The Transformation of Dr. Bessel

Alexander Bessel is a young man in a failing marriage. His wife cheats on him, and so the outbreak of WW1 comes in handy for a change. When a young French soldier dies right in front of him, Bessel seizes the opportunity, assuming his identity.

The Sun's Revenge

An innkeeper in sheer despair murders a passing by musician and steals his money in order to buy medicine for his dying wife. Eventually, he falls into an endless turmoil of guilt and madness.

Tempête sur l'Asie

An adventurer tries to seize oil deposits in Mongolia .

Villa Falconieri

A young count rents a villa near Rome to be near a woman he's courting. While there, he strikes up a friendship with a young woman living with a violent husband.

Countess Mariza

When Gräfin Mariza visits her country estate it is certainly an event. She gives a party to celebrate her engagement to a certain Koloman Zsupan, who unexpectedly shows up. Her authoritarian ways collide with Török, her manager. Based on Emerich Kálmán operetta.

Dämon und Mensch

Philanthropist attempts to awaken the good side in criminals.

Schubert's Dream of Spring

An episode in the life of the Austrian composer Franz Schubert, who wrote the most beautiful love songs, but whose love life was very unhappy: The timid, myopic and rather portly Schubert falls for the beautiful, blond Countess Maria Esterhazy and has impossibly unrealistic fantasies about the two of them as she only admires him for his music. When he’s fired from his position as a teacher in the parish school, the village innkeeper Therese, who secretly has the hots for Schubert, gets him an engagement at a concert in Palace Esterhazy.

The Golden Plague

The Merry-Go-Round

Drama about street walker Elena who marries shop keeper Albert. When her former pimp Peter shows up, her life is ruined. She shoots him and poisons herself.

Isle of Missing Men

A young woman receives an invitation from the Governor of an island prison to spend a week with him. She does so, but conceals the fact that her husband is being held as a convict on the island.

Lady Hamilton

The married Lady Emma Hamilton has an ill fated romance with Admiral Horatio Nelson.

Adventure on the Lido

The already successful tenor Mattei is discovered after he already retired into private life. Der Wiener Staatsoper place a significant part in this musical comedy drama.

Eerie Tales

A demon, a reaper, and the ghost of a prostitute read gothic short stories and act them out.

Tales of Hoffmann

This movie, directed by Richard Oswald, is based on the operetta "Les contes de Hoffmann" by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), which is a genial musical potpourri from various short stories and novels by the Prussian writer, composer, painter, lawyer and judge E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822). While Hoffmann's literary work was longtime considered to be merely fantastical, it was finally researched, in the last years, according to its metaphysical background. Characteristic for Hoffmann's work is his life-long fight against rationalism and for the revelation of nature morte, culminating mostly in carnival-like scenes anticipating literary techniques only described in the works of Bachtin and Bachelard.