Donauschiffer

The action takes place in a central German town in the 1920s. A Jewish factory owner is accused of murdering his accountant. The German nationalist investigating judge, who is determined to have a Jewish perpetrator, still sees Blum as the perpetrator even when evidence of the actual murderer, a former Freikorp fighter, is found. The Social Democratic court president from Berlin sends a criminal investigator to tear apart the judge's chain of evidence.

Until now, the detective stories by author Paul Sanders had always sold splendidly – ​​likely due in no small part to the fact that he always tested all his murderous tricks on his long-suffering secretary, and that all the cases came from the archive of his friend Caspar Natter, a retired police detective. Sanders was all the more shocked, therefore, when his publisher informed him that readers were no longer interested in his books, a fact confirmed by the weak sales figures.

Dr. Blum, a Jewish manufacturer, is falsely accused of a murder. Even when the real killer’s identity becomes evident, the state prosecutor refuses to accept Blum’s innocence.

In the midst of World War II, postman Ludwig Fuchs writes a letter to his former school friend Field Marshal Hermann Göring, urging him to work for peace. He is declared mentally incompetent. After the war, he struggles to shake off the stigma of alleged mental illness. Göring is executed. Fuchs forces the court to examine him: he vandalizes the lobby of Post Office 122 in Munich and is rehabilitated (with full salary compensation for lost years).

Charley Wyckham and Jack Chesney pressure fellow student Fancourt Babberly to pose as Charley's Brazilian Aunt Donna Lucia. Their purpose is to have a chaperone for their amorous visits with Amy and Kitty, niece and ward of crusty Stephen Spettigue. Complications begin when Fancourt, in drag, becomes the love object of old Spettigue and Sir Francis Chesney.

Otto, a feckless Everyman, tries to adjust to the postwar travails of his defeated nation. Stymied by black-market profiteers and government bureaucrats, Otto begins fantasizing about a happier life at the end of that ever-elusive rainbow.

Flanders, Hispanic Monarchy, 1616. The inhabitants of the small town of Boom are busy organizing the annual local festivities when the arrival of the Duke of Olivares, who rules the country on behalf of the King Philip III of Spain, is announced. While the male citizens cowardly surrender to panic like rats on a sinking ship, the brave female citizens, led by the bold wife of the burgomaster, decide to become the best hosts the Spaniards can ever meet.

Two dubious characters disguise themselves as Holmes and Watson to gain attention and end up chasing counterfeiters and stolen stamps.

As a gang of classy jewel thieves hop from one European country to another, an engineer rescues a woman from their clutches.

After she has abused the confidence of the young engineer Pierre Lavernay, the beautiful thief Olga, who has fallen in love with him, wants to break with her criminal past. Unfortunately, by the awkwardness of her former accomplices, Olga is extradited to the police and, sadly, her young lover turns back to Paris.

Madeleine steals a string of pearls in Paris and uses American engineer Tom, who is driving on his vacation to Spain, to get the pearls out of France. But getting the pearls back from him proves to be difficult without falling in love.

A player on a soccer team, where everyone matches together just perfectly, has fallen out of a championship tournament due to illness; which leads to a big problem: who would be the perfect man to replace him? Werner Fehling appears to be the perfect replacement for the sick man. The problem is, he's a bitter rival of the goalkeeper, Jupp Jaeger. Both men love the same girl, Grete Gabler. Grete is the daughter of a senior member of the sports club, which is why she feels doubly under pressure not to do anything to jeopardize the success of the team.

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 strikes and the lax prof proves to be too far removed of the real problems of the world, on the other hand his enemies are shown in the most unsympathetic, satirical way denouncing the militaristic, bourgeois ideology of the Kaiserreich.

Johann, the trusted valet of Count Zirndorf, has an affair with chambermaid Marie, but this liaison ends, as does the count's marriage. Years later trouble ensues when the count's daughter falls for young Hans who might be her brother.

Director Wolfgang Staudte who left East Germany in 1953 to make movies in West Germany, takes a few swipes at the West German judicial system in this fairly effective courtroom drama about the murder of a four-month-old baby. Police almost immediately arrest the mother Ingrid who is the mistress of the father, a rich business VIP married to another woman. His position and wealth keep him insulated from suspicion. A hot-shot lawyer has to overcome the unaccountably biased perceptions of the police, the judge, the prosecutor and almost everyone else in the judicial system. The defence lawyer, driven to an extreme, knows he has to find the real killer or his client will be convicted.