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...
On a mountain lake, in the picturesque Alps in the Salzburg region, the old, rich grumble has retired to his country house and actually only wants to live in peace and seclusion. Soon the longed-for peace will be over, because in the immediate vicinity a home for little-wealthy holiday children will be opened in an empty house, which will be headed by the cheerful and optimistic teacher Miss Helm.
Winnie is desperate and doesn't know what to do next. She is about to marry her lover Paul, who has returned from war captivity. Both want to emigrate to America short after marriage. But the young woman has an illegitimate one-and-a-half-year-old son, whom she has kept secret from her fiancé. The short-tempered Paul would never understand that. When she is on her way to the orphanage, the grumpy senior civil servant Hieronymus Spitz and his little dog Tobby get into her train compartment. After a short observation, Winnie is certain that the misantrope actually has a good heart, because he lovingly takes care of his dog. Without further ado she leaves little Niki with the tax accountant and disappears from the train. Only a note with a request remains. The overwhelmed old gentleman initially wants to get rid of the child, but then takes it home and takes care of it together with his housekeeper. Both take the bundle of joy to their hearts. But then everything turns out differently.
There's only one way for the farmer Assbichler to save his farm from ruin: he has to marry off his son Toni to the pretty Rosl, the daughter of the rich farmer Pius Mang. Mang, however, wants his daughter to marry a well-off man; and so Assbichler has to borrow some cattle to give the farm the appearance of a large farming estate.
Xaver Bimshofer is the richest peasant in the village; and therefore, his only daughter Lenerl should marry a guy, who is diligent enough to keep the exemplary farm running. But Bimshofer doesn’t know, that Lenerl has long been a couple with the servant Sepp. So he suspects that every young man in the village wants to conquer his poor, innocent daughter. So that Lenerl really resists all these attempts, he gets a stone statue from Thomas Kammerlehner’s barn, “The Chaste Kunigunde”, which is supposed to protect the girl’s chastity and to protect her from sin by its positive energy.
The engineer MacAllan designs a tunnel, which will join America and Europe together on the seabed. A group of American billionaires are financing the gigantic project, but the construction of the tunnel is proving to be as tedious as it is dangerous. MacAllan's worst enemy is the speculator Woolf, who had embezzled the money for the construction and who is attempting to cover up his crime by carrying out acts of sabotage. Also filmed in 1933 in a French-language version, LE TUNNEL, and remade in 1935 in England as TRANSATLATIC TUNNEL.
