Brecht's play Fear and Misery of the Third Reich consists of a series of playlets, portraying National Socialist Germany of the 1930s as a land of poverty, violence, fear and pretence. Nazi antisemitism is depicted in several of the sketches, including "the Physicist", "Judicial Process", and "the Jewish Wife".
Baroness Shtral
Taken from a Lermontov play, Sergei Gerasimov's Maskarad (1941) begins when beautiful Nina (Makarova) loses a bracelet during a masked ball. Another woman finds it and without revealing whose bracelet it belongs to, she gives it to an ardent Calvary officer admirer at the ball. This leads to deeper and deeper incisions upon the urbane social body of Tsarist Russia. A drama of pride, marital distrust, gambling, infidelity and humiliation twirls around the decaying corpse of a perverted social class.
Tatyana Lugova
The eve of the 1905 Russian revolution was unquiet at the Skrobotova and Bardin factory. In response to the fair demand of the workers to dismiss the cruel and rude master, the masters close the factory and call in the troops. They shoot of one of the workers, who failed to restrain a rush of hatred towards the owners, ending Skrobotov's life. Gendarmes arrive at the factory. They succeed in uncovering the social democratic organization in the factory. The arrested workers oppose hysterical cruelty of gendarmes with calm, confident courage.
Princess Gagarina's companion
A copying error by a military scribe turns the Russian words "the lieutenants, however" into what looks like "lieutenant Kizhe". The Tsar reads the error, and wants to meet this (non-existent) lieutenant. The courtiers, eager to avoid the wrath of the temperamental Tsar, create a Kizhe to serve as their royal scapegoat.
Yelena Belova
The secret police agent finds that factory director wife is counterrevolutionary but dies from the heart attack. The director reads the diary of an agent and turns his wife to police.
An actress
In the short-lived Commune of Paris, a conscripted soldier falls in love with a Communard saleswoman. As the army cracks down on the revolutionaries, the soldier is forced to fight against the Commune, and the pair's love is put to the test.
Vishnevskaya
The film tells about the Decembrists’ revolt in the south of Russia. Right before the Decembrist Revolt 1825 a chevalier of fortune decides that it's time for a game. But on whom to make a bet? He asks the cards. But he's not the only one who makes the choice.
