Es werde Licht! 4. Teil: Sündige Mütter

A painter with syphilis infects his brother's wife and the child born of their affair.

A doctor who believes that only the immoral catch syphilis reconsiders his stance.

A tyrannical landowner terrorizes his wife and seduces the daughter of one of his employees.

An innkeeper in sheer despair murders a passing by musician and steals his money in order to buy medicine for his dying wife. Eventually, he falls into an endless turmoil of guilt and madness.

A German soldier lies wounded on the front line in the First World War. To avoid capture or death, he assumes the identity of a fallen French officer. As the German soldier happens to speak fluent French, nobody realizes the deception. The soldier begins a new life in Paris, yet remains in constant fear of being exposed as the ‘enemy’.

Moritz Stiefel faces expulsion due to poor marks. When he is caught with an essay titled “Shame and Lust”, he is indeed kicked out – instead of classmate Melchior Gabor, who actually penned it. Gabor was drawing on his experiences with neighbourhood girl Wendla. Then Wendla turns up pregnant. Stiefel descends into despair ... Exploitation between Eros and Thanatos in this “sexual tragedy of youth” based on Frank Wedekind’s play. Setting the film in the 1920s provided a chance to explore “modern” youth culture, complete with cigarettes, jazz music, the gramophone, and a goodly bit of alcohol. Richard Oswald, a master of films of manners and young sex beginning in the 1910s, fully explores the temptations of the youthful body, even early childhood flirtatiousness. At the same time, with his target audience in mind, the film laments the bigotry and double standards of the adult world.

Thomas Bezug, the richest man in the world, is a solitary, domineering and cruel cripple, who hardly can move on his crutches. He dwells a fanatical love for his son, whom he holds like a monkey in a cage. His servants are defaced dwarfs. His secretary is trying to steal Bezugs assets. These are the night people.

An adventurer tries to seize oil deposits in Mongolia .

A young count rents a villa near Rome to be near a woman he's courting. While there, he strikes up a friendship with a young woman living with a violent husband.

When Gräfin Mariza visits her country estate it is certainly an event. She gives a party to celebrate her engagement to a certain Koloman Zsupan, who unexpectedly shows up. Her authoritarian ways collide with Török, her manager. Based on Emerich Kálmán operetta.

An episode in the life of the Austrian composer Franz Schubert, who wrote the most beautiful love songs, but whose love life was very unhappy: The timid, myopic and rather portly Schubert falls for the beautiful, blond Countess Maria Esterhazy and has impossibly unrealistic fantasies about the two of them as she only admires him for his music. When he’s fired from his position as a teacher in the parish school, the village innkeeper Therese, who secretly has the hots for Schubert, gets him an engagement at a concert in Palace Esterhazy.

In 1930s Amsterdam, greengrocer Bet is involved in illicit affairs with businessman Van Santen. To tighten bonds even further, Bet arranges a marriage between her handsome daughter Jans and the businessman's wacky son Hannes. Jans, however, is in love with tough sailor Ko. Based on the succesful Dutch stage musical by Herman Bouber.

Drama about street walker Elena who marries shop keeper Albert. When her former pimp Peter shows up, her life is ruined. She shoots him and poisons herself.

Viktoria is a Hungarian countess who believes her Hussar captain husband was killed in World War I. She marries an American and resettles at the American consulate in Tokyo. Her first husband reappears, alive; and the American generously releases Viktoria from their union.

The married Lady Emma Hamilton has an ill fated romance with Admiral Horatio Nelson.

A demon, a reaper, and the ghost of a prostitute read gothic short stories and act them out.

This movie, directed by Richard Oswald, is based on the operetta "Les contes de Hoffmann" by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), which is a genial musical potpourri from various short stories and novels by the Prussian writer, composer, painter, lawyer and judge E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822). While Hoffmann's literary work was longtime considered to be merely fantastical, it was finally researched, in the last years, according to its metaphysical background. Characteristic for Hoffmann's work is his life-long fight against rationalism and for the revelation of nature morte, culminating mostly in carnival-like scenes anticipating literary techniques only described in the works of Bachtin and Bachelard.