Countess Franziska "is kidnapped" by a band of robbers. However, her father is not willing to pay the ransom so Franziska changes sides.
The ghosts of thieves help a beautiful young countess save her inherited castle from modern developers in this comic horror/musical.
As the title "The Queen's Heart" suggests, this early German black and white version of Mary Queen of Scott's eventful reign and death focuses on her emotional perception rather lyrically, with some songs, mainly by her.
A popular, big spending matinee idol chases a blonde while trying to elude a heartless creditor.
The love of a young Austrian aristocrat to a circus rider is put on a heavy load test when becomes obvious that the former officer has killed the brother of the young woman, a traitor of the country, in the duel.
A 19th-century London cabaret singer is deported to prison in Australia. Her crime? Taking the blame when her lover bounces checks.
A Czarist courier has to get across the Siberia frontier, threatened by Tartar invaders and a treacherous Russian helping them. Strogoff encounters several colorful characters along the way. German language version of the French film Michel Strogoff, adapting the novel by Jules Verne.
Life and death of King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
In a small town a bag with delicate letters disappears. Many of the residents are worried about their written messages. A clever sculptor uses the opportunity to play a prank.
Klaus is a young man in post-war Berlin. He is drawn to his friend Manfred and, under the encouragement of their acquaintance, Dr. Winkler, explore the underground world of gay clubs and electronic music. His family begins to learn of his other life and do everything they can to set him straight.
Historical drama portraying the life of German baroque architect Andreas Schlüter.
Otto, a feckless Everyman, tries to adjust to the postwar travails of his defeated nation. Stymied by black-market profiteers and government bureaucrats, Otto begins fantasizing about a happier life at the end of that ever-elusive rainbow.
Munich-based graphic artist Lukas is an artist with no fixed abode and no desire for commitment, who never stays in the same place for long. His only possessions are his duck, his clothes and a few everyday objects with which he moves from apartment to apartment as a lodger. There he prefers to devote himself entirely to his amorous adventures. With his unconventional manner, he drives philistines, aristocrats and the nouveau riche up the wall.
A moving saga focusing on the women in a family that spans three generations and almost 70 years of German history, from the Wilhelmine period through the end of WWII. This film shows that it takes a combination of hard work, political consciousness and family work in tandem to face the tragedies of war, economic hardship and death.
Vera Meiners' life was sweet but unfortunately for her, it was not to last. Her husband, Jan, left her after she met a former lover in a harmless friendly meeting. Forced to resume her disrupted medical career, she worked in a Swiss clinic but, without the knowledge of the chief surgeon, Vera ordered a risky operation to be performed and was thereafter fired. Penniless, she then works in Spanish nightclubs in order to provide for herself and her child. After many years, she runs into her friend Frank again in one of these nightclubs...
Melodrama set during wartime.
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.
A seductive dancer (Marika Rökk) helps her uncle to fight against the closing of his casino. Through her feminine charm she achieves diplomatic success.
The young Schiller, whose heart and soul are writing and poetry, is forced into the military academy (the pride and joy of the Duke of Württemberg). Schiller is disgusted by the everyday routine of the military, always back and forth between breeding and drills. Conversation, conflict or even critique are discouraged – the oppression insufferable for the young rebel. Disgusted by the brutality, he writes his drama "The Bandit", which he would later publish anonymously. But following a frank conversation with the Duke, Schiller is dishonored and must leave the land.
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).
Before he became cult director Douglas Sirk, Detlef Sierck cut his teeth on such lavish European star vehicles as Das Hofkonzert (The Court Concert). Marta Eggerth is cast as Christine, a young singer who aspires to find out who her father was. Her odyssey brings her to the court of a mythical kingdom, where she is romanced by handsome lieutenant Walter (Johannes Heesters). He is warned not to lose his heart to a "commoner," but all turns out all right when King Serenissimus (Otto Tressler) turns out to be Christine's long-lost daddy. Hofkonzert was designed as a comeback for Marta Eggerth, whose star had eclipsed by the mid-1930s.
The story of the Renaissance-era Swiss physician, alchemist and astrologer Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, better known to the world as Paracelsus.
In a made-up country somewhere in northern Europe: In the armaments factory F.N.G., an important drawing is copied and passed on to the enemy. Suspicion falls on the chief engineer Alexander Nica and his assistant Laurenz. Both are placed before the court; accused by the night watchman Bruns; and sentenced to death for industrial espionage. Before sentencing, however, Nica succeeds in getting away. Now he’s trying to find proof to convince the court of his and Laurenz’ innocence.
A romantic drama directed by Hans Deppe.
Biopic about the Rothschilds, a Jewish family whose members rose to the top of the European banking community during the Napoleonic era.
German chancellor Otto von Bismarck promises the dying emperor Wilhelm I. to be loyal to his grandson. But the gap between young Kaiser Wilhelm II. and old Bismarck is rapidly widening. It soon appears that an era is coming to an end.
Dr. Blum, a Jewish manufacturer, is falsely accused of a murder. Even when the real killer’s identity becomes evident, the state prosecutor refuses to accept Blum’s innocence.
Before the First World War, Dr. Hans Stockmann had a practice in a small town. His powerhungry brother is the mayor of Bad Trimburg, which has developed into a respectable resort. Dr. Stockmann is called in to become the town’s chief physician. He considers the sanitary conditions to be intolerable and insists on a clean-up. His ambitious brother and all those who, till now, have profited well from the corner cutting, are, of course, against that for financial reasons. The doctor is condemned from all sides and the conflict escalates.
National-Socialist propaganda film that serves to memorialize one of the early representatives of colonialism: the German philologist Carl Peters. He is, at the end of the 1900′s, a noted advocate of the establishment of a German colony. Without support from Germany, he struggles on his own account against the English in East Africa. Later he is named Reichskommissar and promotes the expansion of a German colony. But Jewish and Social-Democrat opponents order him back to Germany and force him to resign.
The story of Johann Friedrich Böttger, an apothecary’s apprentice and alchemist’s assistant. Fleeing from the Prussian King, he goes to Saxony, where King Frederick August the Strong takes him to a fortress and demands that he create gold. Böttger is equipped with everything he would need for the task, but he has known for a while that actual gold production is a myth and instead experiments with porcelain—white porcelain, as the Chinese are said to possess. In 1709, he finally succeeds in surprising the King with the "white gold," the first white porcelain made in Europe, he hopes for freedom.
When Bartos, the director of the Odeon variety theater, cancels an artist at short notice, he hires the Terrys out of necessity, whose parents were successful variety artists, but who had not yet received an engagement themselves. Both are supported by Tobs, a friend of their parents. While blonde Mara Terry arrives punctually for the first rehearsal, her dark-haired sister Kora is late like a diva and acts aloof and snippy. At their first performance together the next day, Kora is overtired from partying the night before. During a dangerous act in which she has to balance her upside-down sister on her head, she becomes careless...
Joseph Reiner, a talented music student, tries to get a contract from a film and music producer, aided by Annerl, the girl he loves, and his music school fellows. When famous screen tenor Lincoln gets suddenly indisposed he will have a chance, yet not exactly the one he expected.
About how the British broke the Brazilian monopoly on natural rubber. The storyline suggests a complex relation between adventure, military conquest and imperialism.
Post-war Germany 1945: Two rival gangs of uprooted boys fight each other in the ruins of Berlin, whose business is the black market out of necessity in order to survive. Their respective leaders are Gerhard and Dietrich. A pretty young circus artist named Corona comes to the destroyed city with a traveling circus. She immediately caught the boys' attention. When the latter notice that the circus director is abusing the girl, the two gangs join forces and plot an act of revenge against the tyrant. But with the hustle and bustle caused by this, Corona falls from the trapeze and is seriously injured. When the circus moves on, the boys organize a doctor for the sick artist who has been left behind. Their collectively concern for the blonde beauty makes them forget their enmity. This welds the troops closer together and sets the course for a common, meaningful future.
Both the King and his son have been deposed by popular demand. The now Prinz of Arkadia certainly enjoys his new role, which without much changing his lifestyle leaves him free to concentrate on his main interest -women. Including an actress who once wrote a mocking song about him -a song that he likes to sing.
Returned from exile where he accompanied his mother Caterina Sforza, Giovanni de 'Medici (1498-1526), becomes, under the name of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, captain of fortune at the service of the idea of a united Italy.
After the two vagabonds Robert and Bertram flee from prison, they get to know the innkeeper’s daughter Lenchen at the “Silver Swan” Inn. Because her father is in desperate need of money, Lenchen is to marry the creditor Biedermeier instead of her beloved military recruit Michel. In order to prevent that, Robert and Bertram travel to the capital and, under false names, manage to make their way into the house of the Jewish commercial advisor Ipelmeyer, to whom Biedermeier is deep in debt. During an evening costume ball, the bums steal the family jewels and give them to Lenchen’s father. Lenchen and Michael get married and Robert and Bertram flee in a balloon into the sky.
The stand-alone opera singer Carmen Casini dare not admit to her adult son, the spoiled race car driver Cecil, that she ruined her voice on a stormy day at the racetrack and that her career is thus at an end. Meanwhile, Cecil has fallen in love with the pretty Colette … without suspecting that her father, the wealthy Bartell, was a former lover of his mother and that he’s Cecil’s daddy. Thus, both Carmen and Bartell try to prevent the unfolding love-relationship between brother and sister, because this ain’t the Ozarks, you know! Only after the unhappy Cecil tries to commit suicide after an argument with his mother do Carmen and Bartell realize they still love one another. Suicide attempt be damned; let’s go out on a date! A movie that screams “Fun for the whole family.”
Nazi propaganda film showing the development of the German navy's submarine fleet.
Director Brakke has good reason to be happy: he has just received the news that his son, Theo, won first place in the local boat race. To be sure, he had forbidden his son to take part in the competition, because the son's grades in school are substandard. In the end, Brakke sees no other way than to pull Theo from school and install him as an apprentice in his airplane manufacturing plant. Although Theo is received by the other 150 apprentices in a friendly fashion, he behaves in an arrogant and disrespectful tone towards them. He feels himself to be better than them, because his father is the director of the factory.
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.
Whodunit centered around a hostel.
King Frederick II and his leading advisors hesitate too long in the eyes of some officers, so Major von Schill decides to strike out on his own. He hoped that his brave move would be the catalyst for the great war of liberation. But von Schill's troops were soon defeated by a superior force of Dutch-Danish troops. The king takes a public stand against von Schill's actions and eleven of his officers are shot by summary execution on Napoleon's orders. However, one of them, Lieutenant Heinrich von Wedell, escapes death and is sentenced to forced labor for life. When Wedell's brother Karl, who opposed von Schill's unauthorized actions, learns of Heinrich's fate, he decides to help him in a risky way...
In a fantasy European principality, the headstrong and beautiful Princess Ingrid falls in love with a handsome officer, but dismisses him in a fit of temperamental overreaction when she learns of an alleged liaison.
The Trombonist is a 1949 comedy film directed by Carl Boese and starring Paul Dahlke, Sabine Peters and Ludwig Körner.
The formerly wealthy Baron Carl Erich von Wenden is desperate. His debts are out of control and he is forced to give up everything he owns. Since he doesn’t want to burden his daughter Rosy with all of this, he tells her he’ll take a pleasure trip with her … in truth, however, he has to work as an assistant waiter in the evenings, while Rosy stays in the hotel. He constantly fears his daughter will discover the truth; and this is a shame he cannot bear.
The engineer Wolff Benningsen (Volker von Collande), a self-assured and über-obnoxious jingo jerk meets the young art student Vika von Demnitz (Leny Marenbach) while climbing in the Alps. One get's the idea that he would like to knock her over the head with a club and drag her to his cave but since this is out of fashion he decides to stalk her and annoy her heavy-handedly into a full submission. Understandingly, she instantly dislikes the lad and tries to shake him off. She succeeds a few times but then starts to suffer from some kind of Stockholm syndrome and falls for him. But that's not enough for him, being an infantile egoist he wants to tame the "wild bird" fully and break every last bit of her own will. It's all hard to believe if you haven't seen it yourself.
In a small town in northern Germany at the turn of the century: The wealthy mayor's daughter Felizitas marries the much older owner of a trading house because her childhood friend and lover, an impoverished shipowner's son who has broken off his painting studies, withdraws from her. Although she soon realizes that her decision to marry is a mistake, she initially refuses to follow the voice of her heart until a scandal leads to the lovers' eventual happiness. A conventional melodrama, at least well acted.
Escaping her school teacher life, a lady marries a British military doctor who takes her to Malaysia. But realizing there that the marriage isn't working, she turns to an Oriental prince instead.
Swedish industrial magnate Percival, known as Percy Patterson, has suddenly disappeared after a business meeting with his partner Sully.
Vienna is celebrating New Year’s Eve 1913/14. It is the year, which will see the outbreak of the First World War. In Hotel Sacher, the mood is excellent; and although the political atmosphere is charged, there’s an undercurrent of hate and intolerance in the air. It is with this background that Nadja, a Russian spy, meets the Austrian civil servant Stefan. He loves her, but comes under suspicion of being an agent because of this love.
Prussia, at the time of Frederick the Great. In his service is Major General Dietrich Edler von Roedern, a renowned fortress builder who pursues his work with fanatical zeal and seriousness. He is not in the mood for women or festivities. Although he is married to Elisabeth, a woman who has gradually become estranged from him due to his nature, this marriage only exists on paper. When Frederick II invites him to a soiree, Roedern meets the singer Maria Raven. The two feel connected from the very beginning, a fateful, invisible bond that seems to chain the two very different people together. For the first time, Dietrich von Roedern experiences something like passionate love.
The relationship between Franziska and her partner Michael, a globetrotting photojournalist, remains strained due to their constant separation, until tragedy strikes, forcing Michael to come home and to make a decision about their future.
The double standards of a social class, which pontificates with big words what is proper and improper in the world of morality, while in its heart thinks very differently and acts accordingly.
Film about the fictitious adventures of Franz Freiherr von Trenck, who lived during the times of empress Maria Theresia of Austria garnished with espionage and twisted love affairs.
Set against the backdrop of the 1900 Boxer Rebellion...
Adaptation of Theodor Fontane's novel Mathilde Möhring.
The setting is Lugano (Switzerland), where an apparently very important world conference takes place. The film tells the story of the young Kitty (Hannelore Schroth), who works as a manicurist at the Eden Hotel, and who in the course of events gets to know both a young journalist (Christian Gollong) and the English minister of economics (Fritz Odemar). A lot of wild mix-ups, comic situations, a love story and occasional singing ensue, and in the end most of the VIPs have gained their share of laughter… There’s also a great performance by Paul Hörbiger as the hotel porter. For a 1939 film made in Germany, “Kitty” is remarkably irreverent and satirical about politics.
Ave Maria was the second film-starring vehicle for legendary operatic tenor Beniamino Gigli. Mourning the loss of the only woman he ever loved, concert singer Tino Dossi (Gigli) is temporarily shaken from his doldrums by vivacious Montmartre entertainer Claudette (Kaethe Von Nagy). Dossi doesn't realize that Claudette is merely using him to advance her own singing career. Ultimately won over by Dossi's sincerity and courtesy, Claudette falls in love with him for real, only to suffer the pangs of conscience as a result. About to kill herself, she decides instead to return to Dossi's arms, vowing never to confess her original mercenary intentions.
A German expedition is in the African jungles on an unidentified misson. During this mission one of the German explorers, Thoren, is attacked and captured by the local natives called the Botos.
In the middle of the 19th century, almost one in three women who gave birth died of puerperal fever. The Hungarian doctor Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis also observed these terrible occurrences in his clinic in Vienna. He came to the conclusion that it was primarily the unhygienic conditions in the clinic itself that led to this disease, as his colleagues were constantly shuttling back and forth between the anatomy department and the delivery room. He tries to convince the doctors of the absolute necessity of thorough disinfection by washing their hands with chlorinated lime. He meets with fierce resistance from his colleagues until he himself sets up an exemplary clinic in Budapest.
Consul daughter Anne Stülcken wants to take her fiancee undetected under the magnifying glass and therefore slips in her father's villa in the role of a maid.
A murder in a winter sports hotel jolts Inspector Eyck out of his cozy, relaxed holiday mood. He rushes to the scene, where he encounters crime writer Gorgas, who, as he says, conducts "crime scene studies." But this case isn't fiction, because a dead man lies on the ground. Eyck immediately begins his investigation, which initially yields little insight. And the prime suspect, Gorgas, also has a watertight alibi.
His grandpa gives the orphan boy Robbie a foal that they call "little brother". The boy loves the animal and wants to train it as a racing horse - but then his grandpa dies. Robbie's sister isn't old enough to care for themselves, so they get a guardian who decides to sell all the horses. Robbie hides his "little brother" at a farm, but it's hard for him to come up with the rent regularly..
Popular comedy about a flower seller who cannot afford to pay a tax for having a little dog as her companion, and the new candidate for the post of burgomaster she endangers.
An American heiress in Europe falls in love with a German prince, but he is required to marry someone else for reasons of state convenience.
A Moscow hotel waiter, found at the scene of a murder, tries to locate the real killer among a series of suspects.
Germany, end of the 1950s. After his business partner Kleinschmidt fled to the West, Mr. Reichert managed the company they had once founded together in East Germany alone. The company's export hit is a new type of synthetic fiber. But now the West German company, where Kleinschmidt now works, wants to cancel all orders. Kleinschmidt fears that this could be a welcome opportunity for the East German authorities to order the compulsory expropriation of his company. He wants to save the order on a trip to the West. The reunion with his old friend Kleinschmidt is overshadowed by existential fears.
Otto Friedrich Dennert is a celebrated veteran of the Essen police force. While investigating a series of killings of women he reaches retirement age. The case is taken over by a new team, including Dennert's son Harry. Convinced that they have arrested the wrong person, Dennert begins investigating by himself with assistance from the criminal underworld.