The Merry Monarch

This Brechtian musical about a young woman who flees from her decrepit, noble fiancé and marries a sailor is an interesting, although not a completely successful attempt to translate the sort of stage show to film. It has some good points, including the complete abandonment of the sort of surrealistic stage design that had enlivened the silent cinema. Instead, this tries for a purely cinematic technique, including multiple exposures, undercranking and distorting camera angles and lenses.

During the 16th century the Cossacks and their Ukraine homeland is ruled by Poland. This is the story of the leader of the Cossacks and how his son was sent to study under the Poles to learn how to defeat them in battle. However, the son falls in love with the daughter of a Polish nobleman.

In the very old-fashioned town of Ostend suddenly 13 suitcases are delivered to the Grand Hotel, with a note, that O.F. will be here soon and needs 6 rooms. This event, probably the biggest in 300 years, starts a small wave of modernisation, yet everybody is wondering who O.F. is.

The story of a Jewish entrepreneur ins Tsarist Russia always look for a get rich quick scheme.

During the First World War, the Russian officer Captain Ivan Ignatoff falls in love with his nurse, Natasha Kovrin. But she is subject to an upcoming marriage of family convenience to Brioukow, a wealthy industrialist of peasant stock. Brioukow is unjustifiably jealous, since Natasha has not betrayed him. He forces Ignatoff into his debt as a means of humiliating him. When Ignatoff's new friend, Madame Sabline, offers to pay his debt, preventing his ruin, Ignatoff comes quickly to realize that Madame Sabline has an ulterior motive, one that could prove dangerous to more lives than just Ignatoff's.