In "Menschen Untereinander" ("The Folk Upstairs"), director Gerhard Lamprecht sketches a cross-section of Germany's new post-war society, with its winners, social climbers, and losers, represented by the social microcosm of an apartment building. The gossip-mad Frau Mierig (Lydia Potechina) from the rear building gives the newly-arrived Frau Kaminski (Käthe Haack), the janitor's wife, a lively initiation into the tenants and their peculiarities.
God and Satan war over earth; to settle things, they wager on the soul of Faust, a learned and prayerful alchemist.
In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
A semi-documentary experimental 1930 German silent film created by amateurs with a small budget. With authentic scenes of the metropolis city of Berlin, it's the first film from the later famous screenwriters/directors Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.
Young Cabiria is kidnapped by pirates and sold as a slave in Carthage. Just as she's to be sacrificed to Moloch, Cabiria is rescued by Fulvius Axilla, a good-hearted Roman spy, and his powerful slave, Maciste. The trio are broken up as Cabiria is entrusted to a woman of noble birth. With Cabiria's fate unknown, Maciste punished for his heroism, and Fulvius sent away to fight for Rome, is there any hope of our heroes reuniting?
A divorced woman takes matters into her own hands and destroys her late ex-husband's will, to ensure that their daughter receives her rightful inheritance. Will her efforts be for naught? Based on "Lille Rødhætte" by Henrik Pontoppidan.
An aging doorman, after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious hotel, is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbours and society.
The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.
The story that inspired Albert Chevalier to write his immortal Costermonger song, 'My Old Dutch', is the story this picture tells of London's quaint and sturdy tradesmen - her humble vegetable peddlers
Bill Cosgrove, a hot new rookie for the New York Giants, hits a cold streak during the deciding game of the World's Series.
A wayward wife abandons her husband but finds redemption by preventing a railway accident and finding her way back to him. The full 5-reel feature is believed lost; A 1926 abridgement of roughly 12 minutes survives.
It's Christmas, and a young woman is on her way to celebrate the holidays with her parents. A group of drunk cowboys startle her horses making her wagon, with the woman on it, speed off. By chance Broncho Billy saves her life and the grateful girl invites him over for Christmas dinner. Little does he know that the young lady is the Sheriff's daughter…
Directed by Alexandre Volkoff, 1924
An attorney's wife is determined to fight the evils of addictive substances.
This 1919 silent is the first American film based on the same Sholem Aleichem stories as Fiddler on the Roof, but produced 50 years before the blockbuster musical. Unlike most adaptations of Aleichem’s work, Broken Barriers (Khavah) focuses not on Tevye the milkman, but on his daughter Khavah, who falls in love with the gentile boy Fedka and must navigate the reverberations from this with both her community and her family.
A train operator's obsession with being on time leads to tragedy for his family.
After her father's death, socialite Elaine Fleetwood promises to marry a man she does not love. However, she leaves him at the altar during a wedding ceremony, cuts her hair and decides to disguise herself as a boy and go prospecting in northwest Tasmania. She meets a handsome miner who figures out she is a woman, saves her from a villain and marries her.
Anna is a poor girl who loves Erik, the son of a rich farmer. His parents are however determined to make Erik marry the rich Britta.
At the end of the middle ages, Ursula is accused of having poisoned her own husband. She claims she is innocent, but to prove it, she must submit to a ritual: trial by fire, walking on fire along a path leading directly to a crucifix. A film that has been much commended for the visual creativity shown by the director in successive blending in of images involving Ursula, her husband, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus Christ. Much applauded, also: the performance of Jenny Hasselqvist, thus described by French director René Clair: “We shall never forget her flaming eyes, the severity of her spirit, her abrupt and alarmed expressions, like an animal under threat.”
The story is that of a conniving countess coming between a gay sculptor, Claude Zoret, and his bisexual model and lover, Mikaël, ultimately leading to Zoret's death in a raging storm at the base of a statue of Mikaël as the mythological Icarus. The film is missing 19 minutes of run time.