Refuge

Early morning romantic excursions in a North German village under the thumb of a crusty old mayor.

The two daughters of the fisherman find husbands.

A young singer at the Opera finds out who really loves her, when the theater catches fire on the opening night of the performance.

In a small Hungarian village, a priest discovers a girl named Gitta who can sing beautifully. He takes Gitta with him and turns her into a celebrated revue star. After a quarrel with the priest, she runs away and meets a young composer named Peter, who does not know that she is a successful singer.

It begins with a Tannhäuser performance and ends with the premiere of The Tales of Hoffmann. In between a young ingénue cast in her first big role, the Hoffmann rehearsals, the theatre director and his stage director exchanging cynicisms, a budding love affair. Gründgens at his most repulsive, trying to woo both lovers. And a hair-raising finale. Add to this some snappy dialogue and "pre-code" scenes that make you sit up and stare.

In 1885, famous New York Metropolitan Opera singer Maddalena dall' Orto is scheduled to perform at a festival in the German residence of Ilmingen. It soon becomes obvious that she is non other than Magda von Schwartze, who left the town eight years ago against her father's wishes to become a singer.

A sensitive girl is sent to an all-girls boarding school and develops a romantic attachment to one of her teachers.

Lothar von Pütz and Roswitha von Krakow fall in love and only then discover that their fathers are bitter enemies. When Lothar's father dies, a close friend of his father's, Baron Maximilian von Hanckel, takes the boy under his wing and tries to make peace between the families. He visits Roswitha's father, who begins to hope that he can marry his daughter to the older, but wealthy, baron, who is still a bachelor. When an argument breaks out between Lothar and Roswitha, she agrees to marry Maximilian. It is only at the pre-wedding party that Roswitha and Lothar have a real conversation. Maximilian overhears everything, releases Roswitha from her vows, and brings the two young people together.

Eve's emotions are torn between two European princes, lifelong rivals who happen to be brothers. Eve prefers the nicer of the two princes, but this doesn't stop the other from aggressively stepping up his courtship. When the less agreeable of the two monarches takes control of the throne, he orders Eve to make an immediate choice between himself and his brother.

Karl Kramer is a waiter in a beach hotel on the Baltic Sea. But he has completely different plans in mind for the future. Before he marries Grete Wernicke, the daughter of the hotel manager, he wants to have enough money himself.

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.

The film portrays the life of the Heidelberg-born Elizabeth Charlotte, Princess Palatine, who married into the French royal family during the reign of Louis XIV.