New York in the 1930’s. A group of wealthy women meet in beauty and fashion salons, at parties and other social occasions. Their lives circle around their wealthy husbands or lovers. Film version of a play Fassbinder directed in Hamburg, Clare Booth Luce’s “The Women”.
In Switzerland, German singer Willie falls in love with Jewish composer, Robert, who offers resistance to the Nazis by helping refugees. But his family thinks Willie is a Nazi and may be a risk for them. One day Willie helps Robert but, has to stay in Germany. As Willie starts to sing the song ‘Lili Marleen’ she becomes very famous and every soldier hears that song via radio – even Hitler wants to meet her, but she still does not forget Robert, and helps to smuggle photos of concentration camps to the free Switzerland. Robert wants to visit her, but is captured. Will never see Willie again until war is over.
Aging German man Heinz Alfred Geise is a successful business owner whose past is quite haunting; during World War II he helped orchestrate a Nazi-led bloodbath in a small Greek village. When this secret is exposed in a newspaper article, it causes his son, Andreas, to try to kill both his father and himself.
After a line of mischief Philip Gale, an American sailor, is lured into hiring on the “Yorikke”, a tramp cargo, by Lawski, a stoker from Poland. Still, the two become friends within the motley crew of losers from all nations. Gale and his new companion soon are more than disillusioned: the “Yorikke” is far from seaworthy and more of a coffin than a ship, work is close to slavery, and treatment by the officers and their subalterns is harsh and cynical. One day they make an alarming discovery in a tin of plum butter they have procured from the ship’s cargo…
A young shoemaker is arrested for stealing a small amount of money, and is released after being jailed for 15 years. He wants to have a pass to get a job and start anew, but without a job he doesn’t get a pass; and without a pass, he doesn’t get a job. He gets into the net of Prussian bureaucracy, and can’t see a solution. Until he enters a small Second-Hand Shop, and sees a Prussian Uniform that fits him like a second skin…
George Orr, a man whose dreams can change waking reality, tries to suppress this unpredictable gift with drugs. Dr. Haber, an assigned psychiatrist, discovers the gift to be real and hypnotically induces Mr. Orr to change reality for the benefit of mankind — with bizarre and frightening results.
Set in Hamburg’s “Hell’s Kitchen,” a waterfront milieu of gangsters, pimps, dealers and prostitutes, the story follows the attempts of an ex-seaman first to insinuate himself into the scene, and then to extricate himself from it. He becomes a small-time pimp, sending his naive girlfriend out onto the streets thinking she is financing their middle-class future. When he becomes involved with an old pal, Nil, he increases his criminal portfolio. But when he steals Nil’s girlfriend and things heat up, he leaves for his sister’s middle-class home in Berlin, where his attempts to fit in are doomed from the start. Returning to Hamburg, he starts a rapid decline that delivers him into the waiting arms of Nil, whose revenge is merciless.
Augustin is a 30-year-old university professor. He does not believe in religion. His only belief is in maths, to which he devotes all his time. Then suddenly a series of pressing existential questions start looming in his mind: what is the meaning of life? Is there a god? What is there after death? So he begins a spiritual search that will push him to the edge of sanity.
