Mother and Child

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

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.

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

A power plant worker (Garrison) eagerly joins a strike for higher wages. When his young daughter falls severely ill and needs emergency surgery, the strike he helped organize shuts down the city's power grid. The operating room plunges into darkness during the critical procedure. Overcome by the tragedy, the worker is convinced by his wife (Porten) to abandon the strike.

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.

1865. Katharina goes to a ball in Moscow. There she meets again Tchaikowsky, her first and only love. The young, who is now married to wealthy Michael Iwanowitsch Murakin, a man she does not love, has not forgotten Piotr Illich, the (not yet) famous composer. Both are still in love with each other but Piotr is engaged to Nastassia, a dancer, while for her part Katharina cannot leave her husband. Tchaikowky's first love then decides to sacrifice her happiness to the success of the composer, sponsoring him in secret. Something Piotr will learn only years after. When Katharina finds herself free at last it is too late: Tchaikowsky is dying of cholera and she only has time to close his eyes.

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.

A bold crime caper about muckraking journalist Hans Steindecker, who happens to witness a spectacular murder. Shortly afterwards, he makes the acquaintance of Nelly who desperately wants to leave the country and asks for Steindecker′s assistance. Without giving a second thought, he agrees, and only after Nelly has disappeared does he realize that the young woman duped him.

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.