Excursion into Life

During the Nazi occupation of Poland, an acting troupe becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy.

Two employees at a gift shop can barely stand one another, without realising that they are falling in love through the post as each other's anonymous pen pal.

A stern Russian woman sent to Paris on official business finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest.

The story of seven scholars in search of an expert to teach them about swing music. They seem to have found the perfect candidate in winsome nightclub singer Honey Swanson. But Honey's gangster boyfriend doesn't want to give her up.

After crooked nightclub owner murders a police informant, he blackmails his piano player to allow him to stay at his eccentric mother's boarding house.

“The Red Cat” is a seedy dive. The rich American, Jefferson, who shows up there one day with his family and who recently became the proud owner of the famous Halifax emerald, particularly attracts the attention of the patrons of the “Cat”. One of them approaches the Americans disguised as a marquis, but he has not reckoned with Jefferson’s daughter, Jessie.

A young man shows his millionaire grandfather a film based on Molière's play "Tartuffe" in order to expose the old man's hypocritical governess who covets the young man's inheritance.

Though "blessed" with a complex title, which translates as Marriage with Limited Liability, this German comedy was adapted from the more simply titled stage play Causa Kaiser. Composer Georg Kaiser is unable to secure a divorce from his wife, so he "lives in sin" with his singer-sweetheart Causa. The girl's wealthy uncle dies, leaving her millions -- provided she is married to Georg Kaiser. Hoping to take advantage of a legal loophole, Georg seeks out another man named George Kaiser, intending to marry him off to Causa so that she can collect her legacy. Georg Kaiser # 2 is a middle-aged naif who can't understand why his new bride is so cold to him. When he finds out he's been duped by Kaiser #1, Kaiser #2 finds solace in the arms of another woman closer to his own age, which somehow leads to a happy ending for all concerned.

Susanne Braun is keen to meet her father who she has never seen, but who supports her financially. She visits the Berlin lawyer who oversees the monthly maintenance payments, but he sets her on completely the wrong track. Consequently she encounters several potential fathers.

When a henpecked beauty salon owner goes out for one final, wild night of revelry with his friends, the stag party spirals completely out of control into a chaotic tavern brawl. He wakes up with a massive hangover and a bump on his head, only to discover that his missing engraved lighter has been left at a crime scene, implicating him in the assault of a police officer. Terrified of both the law and his domineering wife, the innocent business owner goes into hiding in the rough part of town, sparking a classic, fast-paced silent film comedy of errors.

A zoologist has housed a wide variety of animals in his apartment and keeps himself busy with them. A pretty young secretary is at his side. Only the young man in the apartment next door is not so keen on the noise and solves the problem by breaking through the dividing wall.

Banker Rudi Moebius and his counselor arrive in Wien for an arranged marriage which should solve their financial problems. Only they don't know, but Lucie Weidling is broken too, and in love with Gustl, a musician without the courage to elope. Meanwhile Rudi meets Steffi and falls in love not even knowing her name. He and Lucie become good friends and decide to help each other.

Rural comedy about a farmer's fiancée who becomes distracted by a handsome young officer staying with them in 1910s Germany.

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.

In this classic German thriller, Hans Beckert, a serial killer who preys on children, becomes the focus of a massive Berlin police manhunt. Beckert's heinous crimes are so repellant and disruptive to city life that he is even targeted by others in the seedy underworld network. With both cops and criminals in pursuit, the murderer soon realizes that people are on his trail, sending him into a tense, panicked attempt to escape justice.

Discovery by Flo Ziegfeld changes a girl's life but not necessarily for the better, as three beautiful women find out when they join the spectacle on Broadway: Susan, the singer who must leave behind her ageing vaudevillian father; vulnerable Sheila, the working girl pursued both by a millionaire and by her loyal boyfriend from Flatbush; and the mysterious European beauty Sandra, whose concert violinist husband cannot endure the thought of their escaping from poverty by promenading her glamor in skimpy costumes.

Prim professor Immanuel Rath finds some of his students ogling racy photos of cabaret performer Lola Lola and visits a local club, The Blue Angel, in an attempt to catch them there. Seeing Lola perform, the teacher is filled with lust, eventually resigning his position at the school to marry the young woman. However, his marriage to a coquette -- whose job is to entice men -- proves to be more difficult than Rath imagined.

In Depression-era New York, painter Eben Adams despairs at his lack of success. One cold winter evening in Central Park, he meets enigmatic, old-fashioned Jennie Appleton, who captures his fancy when she asks him to wait for her to grow up. Soon after, Eben sells a sketch of Jennie to kindly art dealer Miss Spinny and, as he meets the oddly mutable Jennie in fleeting moments, begins to realize they share a special destiny.

In flashback, fifty years after inventing the light bulb, an 82-year-old Edison tells his story starting at age twenty-two with his arrival in New York. He's on his way with the invention of an early form of the stock market ticker.

Starring Betty Amann in her most famous leading role, Joe May's Asphalt is a luxuriously produced German Expressionist classic where tragic liaisons and fatal encounters are shaped alongside the constant roar of Berlin traffic.

Edna marries Texan Sam Gladney, operator of a wheat mill. They have a son, who is killed when very young. Edna discovers by chance how the law treats children who are without parents and decides to do something about it. She opens a home for foundlings and orphans and begins to place children in good homes, despite the opposition of "conservative" citizens, who would condemn illegitimate children for being born out of wedlock. Eventually Edna leads a fight in the Texas legislature to remove the stigma of illegitimacy from birth records in that state, while continuing to be an advocate for homeless children.

Catherine Sykes disappears after a midnight drive with Professor Andrew Gentling . When she's presumed murdered, his friend Martha convinces him that he's a prime suspect and should investigate before he's arrested.

A Nazi propaganda film made to promote anti-Semitism among the German people. Newly-shot footage of Jewish neighborhoods in recently-conquered Poland is combined with preexisting film clips and stills to defame the religion and advance Hitler's slurs that its adherents were plotting to undermine European civilization.

A painter working at the Louvre is struck by the Mona Lisa. When he meets a girl whom he believes bears a resemblance to the painting, and who wants him to become famous, he comes up with the idea of stealing the painting. Based on the real-life theft of 1911.

German-Italian crime drama with a racing milieu: The International criminal, "The Paw", who kills his victims with a prosthesis, has struck again! An engineer, who has designed a new racing car for the Italian firm Alberti has been found beaten to death. The plans for the car have been stolen. Rappis, the firm's director, takes part in the race and hits the finish line at the same time as the German racer, Peter Kruger. Then Rappis is found beaten to death, too.

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’.

Mysterious murders committed by a criminal have kept the public on their toes and the police have mistakenly accused an imposter of the crimes.

Gustav Froehlich and Charlotte Susa play Rochus and Judith, the zwei menschen (two humans) of the title. Rochus' domineering mother insists that he enter the priesthood, but he is reluctant to break up his blissful romance with the fair Judith. A religious fanatic of the first order, the mother swears before God and her Church that Rochus will indeed take his vows. When this does not come about, she dies of grief, whereupon the guilt-stricken Rochus abandons Judith to become a priest. The girl subsequently commits suicide -- and it is Rochus who must officiate over her body during the funeral. This final scene was excised from the print of Zwei Menschen released in New York, leaving audiences hanging in regard to Judith's ultimate fate.

Nazi propaganda film with Hans Albers starring in a dual role as a daring German airman and a Russian general, two cousins who find themselves facing each other in bitter enmity after the end of World War I.

Revolutionaries plot to assassinate a president by blowing up the rail tracks in order make his train derail but this is averted just in time.

Hans, a young journeyman violin maker, meets and falls in love with Christel. But he has to go to Milan for a year. Before he leaves, the two get engaged. Christel's mother, who is against the union, intercepts Hans' letters from Italy.

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.

A film about the pupils of a posh Berlin gymnasium in their final term, and their class teacher teaching them about humanism and tolerance, a lesson that would be badly needed three years later.

By pure chance, Jessie and his four jazz musicians are hired to play at the cabaret theatre “Trocadero”. Unfortunately, she knows nothing about music and it doesn’t help that all four musicians are in love with her. Jessie doesn’t reciprocate their feelings, because she has a thing for Martin. Unfortunately, Martin believes that Jessie stole his car … and so, right before the premiere at the cabaret, she ends up in jail.

Officers stationed in a castle in Flandes during WWI are comforted by Gloria Delamare's recorded voice. One of them even writes her a letter that will never be sent. When the war is over Miss Delamare takes a tour in Belgium and spends a night in that castle. Most unexpectedly her former admirer appears and they dine and dance together. In the morning he has disappeared and she finds the letter. She tries to find him, only to discover he is presumably dead and involved in a family secret.

A Prokurist in a bank is suspected of murdering her boss and refuses to take the stand in her defense, because she believes she has to cover for the boss' nephew.

Jule (Heidemarie Hatheyer), a 25 year old women is not having an easy life. Her cousin Stefan Rüdiger (Albert Matterstock) has left "manor Jobshagen" as an 18 year old and Jule has had to manage business since then. Her uncle, Stefan's father, never could get over the leaving of his son and isolated himself from the world. Jule, once a blithe youngster, became a tough woman by the time. And there are heavy debts on the manor Jobshagen, 6000 Marks. The innkeeper Meyer could give Jule the money, but he wants a big part of the estates of manor Jobshagen for exchange and that is the last thing that Jule would accept.