Hilde von Stolz
"The Trapp Family" is a true story based on the popular novel by the Baroness Von Trapp of Austria. The film was made in 1961, a few years before the other film based on the Trapp Family's life was released - a little movie named "The Sound of Music".
Otto Dernburg is forced by circumstances to dress up as a middle-aged woman.
Set during the rise of the Nazi regime, Elisabeth Maurer and Hans Wieland enjoy successful careers as actors in Berlin. Confident in her career, Elisabeth, who is Jewish, ignores the advice of a colleague to leave Germany in the face of increasing anti-Semitism. Believing that he can protect her if she becomes his wife, Hans convinces Elisabeth to marry him. In the following years, as Hans's career thrives, Elisabeth awaits the end of the Nazi terror which bars her from public life. When the situation worsens in 1938 with the Kristallnacht pogrom, Elisabeth decides to leave the country, but Hans, who still believes he can protect her, convinces her to stay with him.
Wanting a lavish production to mark the 25th anniversary of UFA, the German film studio, Joseph Goebbels, director of the Nazi propaganda machine, commissioned an adaptation of Baron von Münchhausen‘s “autobiographical” stories. Baron von Münchhausen (1720-97) was an eccentric figure in European history, whose tall tales about his adventures rival anything to be found in the legends of Paul Bunyan or classic figures like Odysseus. This film recounts some of the episodes from the Baron’s sensational stories, which are set in the world of the 18th century.
Puck Niklas (Jenny Jugo) loves her husband Peter even though her brother thinks he's a no-good. She's very charming and a bit crazy and does everything to help him get an engagement as an architect. Opportunity comes knocking in the form of factory owner Walter Baumann (Willy Fritsch) who sees through her trickery but at the same time charmed by her, he gives her Peter the job. Soon Walter finds out
Marion Austerlitz is a stubborn person, much to the chagrin of her husband, Dr. Fritz Austerlitz. There's constantly some kind of excitement going on in their house: this time, Marion takes in a barking dog, much against the wishes of her husband; that time she's harrasses the old servant; then countless traffic tickets from the police come in the mail; or high bills for extravagant huts are delivered by the mailman. Finally, Fritz blows a fuse. In the presence of his friend, Professor Endres, and Marion's mother, a big fight breaks out between the couple.
The young emperor Joseph II of Austria and Hungary is not interested in romance and marriage, and every time his mother makes arrangements for him to meet eligible young ladies, he escapes under some pretense. This time he is off on a 'tour of inspection' with his trusted friend von Kleber. Things become complicated when von Kleber, pretending to be the emperor so as to protect the real Joseph from discovery, falls in love with Christine, the landlady of their lodgings. And when Christine later writes to the emperor, her letter is read by the mother of the real emperor, as keen as ever to see him getting married, and so the lady is invited to the imperial court.
In Vienna, during the 1848 Revolution, opera singer Antonia Corvelli marries Detlev von Blossin, a rich landowner. But, as she refuses to give up her career, her infuriated husband returns to Pomerania without her. After falling into the clutches of the cruel and wicked count Stefan Oginski, whose lover she unfortunately becomes, Antonia has no other choice but to pass for dead in order to escape him. She then returns to Italy where she joins small theater companies under various aliases. Until one day she is overtaken by her fate...
London 1846. Singer Gloria Vane has a resounding success at the Adelphi Theater. While she throws a brilliant party
Renate Hubricht finds her uncle, the money broker Theodor Hubricht, murdered in his villa. That very night, the banker Lorik is arrested, who was last seen in Hubricht’s house. Renate, who doesn’t wish to live alone in the eerie estate lodges with the lawyer Dr. Birk. She doesn’t tell him, that her lover, the musician Robert Wendland, had an argument with her uncle on the evening of the murder. When Lorik is sentenced to 10 years prison, Renate is thrown into a quandary. She believes she’s protecting the real culprit with her silence.
This film is a fascinating showcase for Emil Janning's theatrical play. He's a gentle school teacher who believes in his boys and is easily fooled about all things, while the other town officials want him dismissed. Curiously it's very hard to see what the film is exactly aiming for. Disaster strikes and the lax prof proves to be too far removed of the real problems of the world, on the other hand his enemies are shown in the most unsympathetic, satirical way denouncing the militaristic, bourgeois ideology of the Kaiserreich.
A moving actor at the rococo era shows the power-hungry-crude minister of a small state prince in the barriers, while he makes use of his resemblance to the sovereign and slips in his role. - Double role for Rudolf Forster who plays his figures very much chilly.
To escape dreary country life, a count travels to Italy with a friend every year. Instead of the alleged purchase of horses, the reason he gives to his mother as to why he needs to travel to Italy, he spends his time chasing after the ladies.
After a masked carnival ball, Gerda Harrandt, wife of the surgeon Carl Ludwig Harrandt, allows the fashionable artist Ferdinand von Heidenick to paint a portrait of her wearing only a mask and a muff. This muff however belongs to Anita Keller, in secret the painter's lover but also the fiancée of the court orchestra director Paul Harrandt. The picture is then published in the newspaper. When Paul sees it and asks von Heidenick some questions about the identity of the model, the artist is forced to improvise a story and on the spur of the moment invents a woman called Leopoldine Dur as the alleged model. Leopoldine Dur however turns out to be a real woman whose acquaintance Heidenick makes shortly afterwards.
Musician Robert Sand is released from prison in April 1933, after serving five years for manslaughter. Disappointed not to find his wife Marie waiting for him outside the prison gates, he heads into the city. At the same time, Marie makes her way in the other direction. For one portentous day, they look for each other in the noisy city of Berlin. Doubt, mistrust, and jealousy begin to germinate in Robert’s mind.
