Diederich Heßling is scared of everything and everyone. But as he grows up, he comes to realize that he has to offer his services to the powers-that-be if he wants to wield power himself. His life motto now runs: bow to those at the top and tread on those below. In this way, he always succeeds: as a student in a duel-fighting student fraternity and as a businessman in a paper factory. He cajoles the obese district administrative president Von Wulkow and wins his favor. He slanders his financial rivals and hatches a plot with the social democrats in the town council. On his honeymoon with his rich wife Guste, he finally finds a chance to do his beloved Kaiser a favor. And when a memorial to the Kaiser is unveiled in the town where Diederich lives and works, he delivers the address. He stands behind the lectern in the pouring rain, saluting his Kaiser. The crowd is dispersed. Everything is laid in ruins...
Paris, France, 1482. Frollo, Chief Justice of benevolent King Louis XI, gets infatuated by the beauty of Esmeralda, a young Romani girl. The hunchback Quasimodo, Frollo's protege and bell-ringer of Notre Dame, lives in peace among the bells in the heights of the immense cathedral until he is involved by the twisted magistrate in his malicious plans to free himself from Esmeralda's alleged spell, which he believes to be the devil's work.
As a parting shot, fired reporter Ann Mitchell prints a fake letter from unemployed "John Doe," who threatens suicide in protest of social ills. The paper is forced to rehire Ann and hires John Willoughby to impersonate "Doe." Ann and her bosses cynically milk the story for all it's worth, until the made-up "John Doe" philosophy starts a whole political movement.
After World War I, Armistice Lloyd Hart goes back to practice law, former saloon keeper George Hally turns to bootlegging, and out-of-work Eddie Bartlett becomes a cab driver. Eddie builds a fleet of cabs through delivery of bootleg liquor and hires Lloyd as his lawyer. George becomes Eddie's partner and the rackets flourish until love and rivalry interfere.
A 1946 war movie which tells the courageous efforts by French railway workers to sabotage Nazi reinforcement-troop trains.
The cunning Cardinal Richelieu must save King Louis XIII from treachery within his inner circle.
Vörös Hajnal (Red Dawn), a co-operative is the venue of skylarking, while the storm destroys the wheat which is to be harvested soon. Árendás, a middle-peasant, voices severe accusations against members of the co-operative: out of negligence, they failed to keep the ditches clean. It is always the soft option they seem to favour, while the necessity of properly taking care of the farmlands is long-forgotten. Members of the co-operative and the village people are deeply divided.
An exciting story of Husine coalminers who formed a partisan batch and put up an armed resistance during WW2 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Das kleine und das große Glück
Yugoslav Partizans, captured by Nazis, are sent to concentration camps in distant Norway. The local population help some Partizans survive or flee to neutral Sweden.
Johann Strauss firmly established himself as the leader of a dance orchestra in Vienna in the 1840s. His sons Johann junior and Josef have clearly inherited their father's talent. Nevertheless, father Johann is strictly opposed to both of them training as composers.
Loving young couple Luna and Amar try their best to overcome unexpected obstacles that threaten their relationship. After Amar's dramatic change in a fundamentalist community, Luna tears herself apart searching if love is truly enough to keep the couple together on the path to a lifetime of happiness...
Espionage, war and romance in the Far East in 1904: Russian naval officer Boris Ranewsky marries Youki, the sister of a fanatical Japanese officer, but war is imminent.
The story of a group of Sicilian miners and their families decide to illegally cross the border to France and their hardships.
A petty thief is put on trial for the attempted murder of a lawyer. Through a series of flashbacks, the intertwining lives of the thief, the lawyer, and the thief's defense lawyer are illustrated.
After greedy men have Edmound Dantes unjustly imprisoned for 20 years for innocently delivering a letter entrusted to him, he escapes to revenge himself on them.
A ruthless motorcycle gang rides into a California town and terrorizes its denizens.
The story of courtesan and dance-hall girl Emma Hamilton, including her relationships with Sir William Hamilton and Admiral Horatio Nelson and her rise and fall, set during the Napoleonic Wars.
In 1900, a clan attempts to strike a deal with a Chicago industrialist to get him to build cotton mills in their Deep South town.
On the eve of World War II, a British officer revisits Waterloo Bridge and recalls the young man he was at the beginning of World War I and the young ballerina he met just before he left for the front.