Maria, the Servant

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.

When a vacationing couple in Tangiers runs into an old friend there, they discover that he is searching for his missing girlfriend who has been kidnapped by an international gang of white slavers.

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 from the rear building gives the newly-arrived Frau Kaminski, the janitor's wife, a lively initiation into the tenants and their peculiarities.

A deranged woman artist falls in love with a young sculptor. The impossible love ends tragically.

East Germany's contribution to the 1957 Cannes Film Festival was the wartime melodrama Betrogen bis zum Juengsten Tag. Had the film been released in the U.S., the title would probably have translated to Duped Till the Last. The film condemns the Nazi mindset by concentrating on a particularly odious cover-up. When his son is involved in the accidental killing of a girl, a Gestapo general pulls strings to save the boy from prosecution. The general manages to pin the blame for the killing on a group of Russians, whereupon he gives the men under his command carte blanche to round up and execute as many innocent Russians as they wish. This act of brutality is contrasted with the pangs of guilt suffered by the son and his co-conspirators.

Werner Dux, heir of the big car company "Dux-Werke", is a gambler who has just been arrested in Chicago for shooting a cardsharper. While in jail, he learns from his friend Michael Nissen that his father has died recently. That means that the Dux-Werke are without a leader at the moment, for Werner's cousin Steffie, who is his co-heiress, is still too young to run the firm. In this situation, Werner convinces his friend Michael, who is an engineer by profession, to take over the firm as long as he is in jail and to pose as him. Michael agrees and is able to bring the firm up again. He even arranges a reliability test for motorcycles via Istanbul, Rome and Barcelona, which creates a big Turkish order for the company. When the real Werner escapes from jail and arrives in Germany, it looks as if the whole story is up to bust. But Werner needs money, so he convinces Michael to go on as before and hand over all profits of the firm to him.

The Gangster Macheath secretly marries the daughter of beggar king Peachum. When Peachum finds out, he instructs the police chief Brown to arrest and hang Macheath. If not, all the beggars of Soho will disturb the upcoming coronation.

Adapted from the novel L'Argent by Émile Zola, the film portrays the world of banking and the stock market in Paris in the 1920s.

Axel and Bertha are a modern, emancipated artist couple in Paris. He is feminine and vain. She is financially independent, member of the women's association "Married's Women's right of ownership" and uses male nude models.

As a painter in the court of King Carlos IV, Goya has attained wealth and reputation. He believes in King and Church, yet he is also a Spaniard who dearly loves his people. This contradiction presents him with a dilemma.

The beautiful Evelyne Schratt, who has many admirerers, and whose two husbands both died under mysterious circumstances, is giving a reception. When one of her admirers is found stabbed to death in a room upstairs, the police detains everyone in the house and begins an interrogation (oh goody: does dinner come with this mystery theatre, too?). Evelyne admits, that the murdered man tried to blackmail about some information he had about the death of the two husbands.

Russia, 1905. Tuvia is the only Jew living in the village of Antevka. He is very poor but things change when, as a token of gratitude for a service rendered, he is given a cow and some food. Now, his wife, his seven daughters and himself have access to a better life. Tuvia sells his milk and his butter. Moreover, he is now able to give his daughters a dowry and marry them. But you can't buy happiness...

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.

Singing sailor Hannes, who now entertains the crowd at St. Pauli's Hippodrome after years at sea, promises his dying brother that he will take care of his ex-girlfriend Gisa. Taking Gisa to Hamburg to live with him, Hannes quickly falls in love with her, but soon has to face Gisa's affection for another man, Willem.

New Year’s Eve should be a time of joy for everyone. But Herr Reinhardt has decided to take his life on this evening. During his last conversation with his friend, Dr. Storp, the good doctor convinced him to wait until the following morning to kick the bucket and instead spend a happy evening with him in the emergency room on Alexanderplatz. It turns out to be an instructive night for Reinhardt. Life’s different fates play out before his eyes.

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.

In 18th century Europe, King Friedrich II of Prussia leads his army through the seven-years-war with neighboring states, and after numerous near defeats, eventually brings a victorious army back to Berlin.

A travelling cinema arrives in a small, Italian town. The only place suitable for the screenings is the inn run by Mirandolina, a woman with an impeccable reputation. Tino, who works for the cinema, becomes enamoured of Mirandolina but finds his advances to her hindered by her upright reputation and the rivalry of local figures.

A young woman moves to Berlin to work as a press photographer.

King Frederick II (aka "Frederick the Great") of Prussia is engaged in a major battle against the Austrian army at Kunersdorf, and things aren't going well. The Austrians are inflicting major casualties, and his army is beginning to crumble. Defeat seems inevitable when a combination of events gives him hope that he may pull victory from the jaws of defeat after all.

After six years, a man shows up, whom his wife had declared dead. Her current husband is regarded by the son of the once-missing man as his father. Only after many tear can the returning man be convinced not to press for custody of the son.

During the Cold War, an American scientist appears to defect to East Germany as part of a cloak and dagger mission to find the formula for a resin solution—but the plan goes awry when his fiancee, unaware of his motivation, follows him across the border.

Dr. Mabuse and his organization of criminals are in the process of completing their latest scheme, a theft of information that will allow Mabuse to make huge profits on the stock exchange. Afterwards, Mabuse disguises himself and attends the Folies Bergères show, where Cara Carozza, the main attraction of the show, passes him information on Mabuse's next intended victim, the young millionaire Edgar Hull. Mabuse then uses psychic manipulation to lure Hull into a card game where he loses heavily. When Police Commissioner von Wenk begins an investigation of this mysterious crime spree, he has little to go on, and he needs to find someone who can help him.

A serial killer who calls himself "The Laughing Corpse" dresses up in a skeleton costume and kills his victims with a poison-filled scorpion-shaped ring.

Fu Manchu abducts a missionary doctor and forces him to surgically turn one of his hypnotized dacoits into a murderous doppelgänger of his arch-nemesis Inspector Nayland Smith of Scotland Yard as, part of a plan to become leader of the World's criminals

A diligent office worker and a cheeky sales representative are tasked by their boss with reserving a first-class hotel room with a bathroom for a visiting Hamburg exporter and his wife. A misunderstanding leads to non-stop confusion, because the office worker is spending his first wedding anniversary with his wife in the rented hotel room.

Small time crook Napoleone falls into an unlikely gang made up of a gangster, called The Baron, and his two cohorts, Agonia and The Captain, where Napoleone takes them to Rome where they shack up with a shady used car dealer caled Il Cajella to help finance their new life of crime by planing to rob a statue from the Vatican. But a big-time American gangster, named Joe Ventura, hears about the heist and wants the priceless statue for himself by having his mistress, Samantha, come onto and betray the woman-hungry Cajella to give the statue away to her.

A wife believes her husband has been deceiving her and decides to have some fun at his expense. After a bit of mischief, her husband, a lawyer who is preparing a divorce for a client, decides to start divorce proceedings himself. The wife then realises she has gone too far.

William MacPhab loses seven-pounds in the stock market and decides to slap the man who was responsible for the stock manipulation that caused him to lose his money. Astor Terbanks, the stock-market manipulator is surprised the next day when he gets soundly slapped by MacPhab, and the latter promises to deliver one more a day for the next six days. Terbank's daughter, Daisy, is amused by the procedure and is attracted to MacPhab.

Famous composer Millöcker saves lovesick clerk Ferdinand from killing himself and helps him impress and get close to Henriette, the rich heiress the boy adores. But one day Ferdinand overhears Millöcker confessing his own love to the girl.

All throughout his entire life, Friedrich Wilhelm Hoffmann let his career run roughshod over his personal life. He had no wife, because he was married instead to his chocolate factory. Now he’s old and gray, and his relatives, who are greedily waiting for him to kick the bucket so they can get their hands on his worldly goods, keep their distance from him. Then one day, an astonished Hoffmann is visited by a young woman named Brigitte, who asserts, that she’s his granddaughter. Suddenly, it all comes back to the old man: as a young man, he had a short, but intense, love affair, which he had to end on the insistence of his father.

Told in flashback, the film recounts the events leading up to the killing of good-for-nothing Curt Jurgens. Warned by her friends and relatives that Jurgens is a bad job, impulsive Ina Kahr marries him anyway. His ceaseless philandering and abuse wears away at Ina to the point that she contemplates poisoning her husband...