Hannes Stelzer

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.

Signal in der Nacht

At the turn of the century in Munich, a ballerina accepts the sponsorship of an older industrialist but also spends time with his son.

This Nazi propaganda film details the exploits of a group of German Luftwaffe pilots flying Stukas--fighter-bombers--in the Battle of France in the early days of World War II.

A sculptor, an enemy of modern art, sets an example. He sculpts a statue of Venus in the style of the Greek antiquity and buries it in a forest. When it's dug up in 1930, it's considered to be a 2 000 year old, antique statue.

German film about Luftwaffe pilots. It depicts a love triangle involving two of them being overcome by their participation in battle together.

Silvesternacht am Alexanderplatz

During the Great War, German soldiers are persuaded to die heroically in order to take a French village held by the British.

A Hopeless Case

Produced by the Nazis in honor of the 150th anniversary of Mozart's death: a celebration of his music, as the film shows him traveling to Prague for the Don Giovanni premiere and inspired by his wife to compose the finale.

The famous tightrope artist Truxa is drinking at the Artisan bar in New York. He meets a young man, Husen, and gives him his stage name Truxa. He is to take the real Truxa's place at a circus show in Wintergarten, Berlin.

Der Herrscher (The Sovereign) was based on Before Sunset, a play by Gerhart Hauptmann. The great Emil Jannings stars as Mathias Clausen, a self-made businessman who is forced to do a great deal of soul-searching when his wife unexpectedly dies. Determining to start life anew, he falls in love with his secretary Inken (Marianne Hoppe) and impulsively takes a vacation to Italy. Clausen's selfish grown children, not wishing to share their father's affections -- nor his money -- with his new wife-to-be, go to court demanding that Clausen be declared mentally incompetent. Upon finding this out, Clausen flies into a rage, leaving the audience to wonder whether or not he really as gone off his trolley. Der Herrscher was directed by Veit Harlan, more famous (or notorious) for his viciously anti-Semitic Jud Suess (1940).

Was wird hier gespielt?

Nazi propaganda film chronicling the plight of Germans caught by the outbreak of war in 1939 and their frantic attempts to return to the Fatherland to join the battle.

Der Abenteurer von Paris

Der Katzensteg

The residents of the villages Strasslach and Rott are anything but friends. The residents of the “enemy” town are ridiculed at every chance the residents of the other village can get to do so. And it’s no different, when Rott is getting ready to celebrate the 300th anniversary of its founding. The residents of Strasslach ridicule their neighbors, because the Rotters don’t want to celebrate the anniversary, because it’ll cost money. Even the church doesn’t have an organ, because that would cost money, too.

Fernand has escaped from prison and finds shelter in the traveling circus Barlay, where his former wife Flora works as a predator trainer. Their son, now grown up, Marcel is an art rider and does not know that Fernand is his father. Marcel loves Yvonne, the daughter of director Barlay. He is against the connection, sends his daughter to Italy and convinces Marcel that Yvonne does not return his feelings.

The Gambler