The Pranks

Young Jan Bergwall visits his grandmother, the so-called centenary, at Woyland Castle. There he meets his cousin Andrea, who everyone calls "Fundvogel". Jan is fascinated by the young girl's beauty, and soon there is an erotic tension in the air between the two. Although they both have strong feelings for each other, they are afraid to make a commitment, even though their domineering grandmother is determined that they marry. Panicked that he might feel obliged to marry Andrea, Jan escapes from this place. Andrea is deeply disappointed and seeks revenge. Out of spite, she becomes involved with the falconer Bartel and is later raped in a wooden hut. The centigress, concerned about morals and customs, then sends Fundvogel to a convent. She escapes from there and flees into the arms of Jan. When he learns from a letter from the countess what has happened to Andrea, he leaves her a second time. In her despair, Fundvogel then throws herself off a bridge into the floods with suicidal intent.

Rural comedy about a farmer's fiancée who becomes distracted by a handsome young officer staying with them in 1910s Germany.

Rather coarse, pre-War comedy about a Markgraf -- Heinrich XXVI -- who bathes in the springs of the Ammendorf to strengthen his potency. The town and its springs are especially well known for the many couples with lots of children, who, for tax reasons, live there unmarried. The town smithy and bully provides his vitality to ensure the countess has an heir for the throne.

A feature-length jewish joke: The heavily indebted Sami Bambus fakes his death, so that his debts are taken over by the greedy heirs, led by the scrounger Prellstein. The putative heir also brings speculators to the scene, and the general confusion can ultimately only be reconciled by the summoned uncle Salomon and by Samis' return from the dead.

The unemployed secretary Käte applies a job by mistake in the piano factory of the entrepreneur Helmut Hofert. He does not really have any need for an additional secretary at the moment, but Käte is very attractive.

Film version of the operetta by Emmerich Kalman. Victor has won 10 000 Mark with his ceiling painting. In the local pub, he celebrates his triumph. Countess Alexandra happens to drop into the pub too, and is thought to be a model by the sponsor of the prize, Count Meredith. Victor soon has to save her from an embarassing misunderstanding. The two men insult each other and Victor loses his prize.

Country Dr. Robert Koch is desperate: a tuberculosis epidemic is decimating the children in his district and no one is able to do anything about it. Every fourth child is already sick and the parents must helplessly watch as their young ones die. Now Koch is undertaking to find the cause of the tuberculosis --- something he has already been working on for years --- which has been causing this plague of illness. His work is made more difficult by envy; for example, that of his teacher, who was wounded defending his honor. But his greatest obstacle is the famous Berliner scientist and Reichstag deputy, Privy Councilor Rudolf Virchow: He is extraordinarily skeptical of Koch's theory, that the cause for tuberculosis is a bacteria.

A Hungarian countess, wanting to dissuade unwanted suitors, announces her engagement to a fictional count Zsupán. Things go awry when a count Zsupán shows up, having heard of his engagement in the papers.

Viktor Schott, daredevil and womanizer, is charged by his father, a jeweler, to go to Istanbul and purchase a valuable emerald necklace from a rich Persian and to bring it back by ship to Marseille. A pair of criminals are watching him and attractive Delia, with whom Viktor is in love, is used as bait. His boyhood friend Sibyl, who is in love with Viktor, warns him of the criminal ship owner and the captain, who intend to steal the jewel during a masked ball on board. Shortly before reaching the coast of France, an explosion causes the ship to capsize.

The street urchin Scampolo (which means, "A Nothing"), who sleeps at night in a telephone booth and earns a little money running errands for a laundry, falls in love with a despondent, out-of-work bank manager in Depression-torn Germany, and thereby becomes a woman in the eyes of other men.

The stenotypist Margit is supposed to take 3,000 Marks to the bank for her boss, Mr. Plaumann, but she lazes away the time window-shopping, and eventually stands before a closed door. She follows Plaumann to Dresden, where he, believing the money is deposited in a bank as a down payment, wants to purchase a newfangled remote control from the inventor Lambach. Since Plaumann’s car breaks down on the road, Margit arrives before him and rests in the seemingly empty hotel room which later turns out to be Lambach’s. Meanwhile, Lambach himself is being spied on by the jealous cousin of his fiancée, who can’t wait to catch him in the act…

The story of the stormy relationship between King Friedrich Wilhelm and his son, who later became known as King Frederick the Great of Prussia.