Les dieux s'amusent

After World War II, Jürgen Godeysen ends up in a hospital, wounded and traumatized. There, the young Nicoline reads to him from the diaries of his father, Michael. The entries chronicle his life and loves, from the moment he first encountered his first love as a young ensign in Berlin at the turn of the century, to the moment he returned from World War I broken and with no will to live.

The brothel mother's illegitimate daughter takes revenge by luring her half-siblings into the brothel.

Rupp (Jannings) is a former butcher, made rich in the meat packing industry as a result of the reversal of fortunes brought on by WWI. He is crude, uncouth and uneducated. His son, Fred, is the apple of his father's eye and is an auto enthusiast. The widowed Rupp falls in love with a former aristocrat, Helen, now down on her luck and pawning her last heirloom. He proposes marriage and she accepts in order to save her ailing mother who needs a monetary influx to avoid death. Her former boyfriend, Platen, warns Helen against Rupp's intentions - he and Rupp are enemies, Rupp having caused his being fired for protecting a chorus girl against Rupp's unwanted advances. Meanwhile, Graf, a shyster, arranges purchase of a near bankrupt auto manufacturing firm, Phoenix, to Rupp's great advantage with practically no monetary recognition to Graf, who swears revenge. Rupp comes upon his son begging Helen not to marry his father but to return to Platen.

In order to help bring Nazis to justice, U.S. government agent T.R. Devlin recruits Alicia Huberman, the American daughter of a convicted German war criminal, as a spy. As they begin to fall for one another, Alicia is instructed to win the affections of Alexander Sebastian, a Nazi hiding out in Brazil. When Sebastian becomes serious about his relationship with Alicia, the stakes get higher, and Devlin must watch her slip further undercover.

A struggling female soprano finds work playing a male female impersonator, but it complicates her personal life.

In London at the turn of the century, underworld kingpin Mack the Knife marries Polly Peachum without the knowledge of her father, the equally enterprising 'king of the beggars'.

Conrad Veidt plays a famous musician who is blackmailed for being gay. Eventually he stands trial and is convicted. At the end the film pleads for the abolition of §175 (the law that punishes homosexuality).

Parisians Josette and Pierre are a happy couple, but also a completely broke one. An absurd chain of events leads them to Professor Trouhadec, who is in a predicament.

Juggler and con-artist Caesar comes to Karlsbad, where he hopes to trick the renowned Vaudeville manager Willard into taking him to America. But when he actually meets Willard, Caesar mistakes him for a certain Mr. Lehmann. Willard / Lehmann is not amused, since Caesar constantly courts his daughter Eva. While fooling around, Caesar doesn’t notice that young Rosl, the daughter of innkeeper Mrs. Svoboda, has fallen in love with him. Finally, the romantic and comical confusion is resolved during a hotel fire.

Helene has agreed to marry a man that she isn't in love with. On the day of her wedding her cousin arrives just in time to rescue her and they run away together. They stay with her aged grandmother who assumes the young man (whom she doesn't know) to be the new husband and has prepared a bridal bed for them.

During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, surgeon Dr. Franticek Svoboda, a Czech patriot, assassinates the brutal "Hangman of Europe", Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich, and is wounded in the process. In his attempt to escape, he is helped by history professor Stephen Novotny and his daughter Mascha.