Martin Brandt (1903-1989), an unforgettable Jewish actor and former member of the Jewish Kulturbund Theater in Berlin, recites from Macbeth and Nathan the Wise, the play that opened the theater in October 1933. These last filmic images of Brandt are combined with historic footage and traces of the Jewish past in Berlin.
The year 1933: Successful actress Maria Rheine is in love with her Jewish colleague Mark Löwenthal. When the Nazis implement the racist Nuremberg Laws, their relationship is severely endangered. Defiant Maria decides to stay together with Mark and ends her promising career: She assumes a Jewish identity and continues to work under the name Manja Löwenthal. She and Mark perform at the Jewish Theatre in Berlin, until they become victims of an intrigue: Their colleague Judith, who has a crush on Mark, denounces them to the secret police.
The devil plays the leading role, but rarely has the devil taken such a charming and seductive form as in Anouilh's. As a young girl named Biondetta - blond and innocent as an angel - Lucifer appears to the young Spanish nobleman Alvarez, who is an officer in the service of the King of Naples. In this guise, it is easy for the devil to make the young Spaniard fall in love with him. But Eros has a hard time when strict custom and morality suppress nature. In vain the devil tempts him with the pleasures of the world. Neither carnival, gambling, nor the most beautiful courtesan can yet soften the officer. Or can they?
A German living in India during World War II is blackmailed by the English to impersonate an SS officer on board a cargo ship leaving Japan for Germany carrying a large supply of rubber for tyres. His mission is to disable the scuttling charges so the captain cannot sink the ship if they are stopped by English warships.
A selfish and prideful young Dutch doctor, through a series of circumstances, comes to learn that he does indeed "need" a higher spiritual being and other people.
Richard Basehart stars as one of the most influential and one of the most reviled men in history in this probing psychological study of a man who nearly gained dominance over the entire western world--at the cost of millions of lives--Hitler.
In 1947, four German judges who served on the bench during the Nazi regime face a military tribunal to answer charges of crimes against humanity. Chief Justice Haywood hears evidence and testimony not only from lead defendant Ernst Janning and his defense attorney Hans Rolfe, but also from the widow of a Nazi general, an idealistic U.S. Army captain and reluctant witness Irene Wallner.
A crusty, eccentric priest recruits three reluctant convicts to help him rescue a children's leper colony from a Pacific island menaced by a smoldering volcano.