Our Daily Bread(1949)

Overwhelmed by personal and professional problems, biologist Friedrich von Kammacher decides to travel abroad in order to regain the joy of living. During his adventurous journey he will meet two very different women, one of whom will be the key to his fate.

On a small Mexican island dwells a group of Indians who live in the traditional manner and who disdain outsiders. The beautiful Maclovia and the poverty-stricken Jose Maria are in love, but her father refuses to allow their marriage, or even any communication between them, due to Jose Maria's lack of means.

Jonny Wilken is an ageing lion trainer in a circus. He is in love with his younger colleague Jutta Sarris. On her wedding day, Jutta's favorite Bengal tiger attacks her out of jealousy and kills her. Jonny, full of pain and out of revenge, enters the cage to kill the animal with his bare hands. However, the tiger bows to him without any resistance.

Berlin, 1932. The Weimar Republic is torn apart in the struggle between right- and left-wing extremists and Berlin is a powder keg. Nightclub singer Henny Dalgow get to know the Social Democratic congressman and Jewish doctor Albert Goldman, and the two become a slightly odd couple. Albert is a sworn pacifist after his experiences in the First World War. Contrary to his beliefs he agrees to act as courier for his brother Edwin, who belongs to a radical communist cell.

This film is the first of a two-part historical and biographical portrait of the communist politician and anti-fascist Ernst Thälmann. In early November 1918, Ernst Thälmann is an unwilling soldier serving on the western front. As the revolutionary movement at home is threatened by the betrayal of the Social Democrats and fissures in the working class, Thälmann calls on his fellow soldiers to put down their weapons and unite with the workers in the communist struggle at home. Thälmann’s qualms about which side he is fighting on continue, but when the local police attempt to prevent a shipment of provisions and supplies from reaching the people in Petrograd, he intervenes and the ship is unloaded. With this moment of clarity, Thälmann continues to follow his political convictions and joins the workers at the Hamburg uprising in October 1923.

A Czech woman is kidnapped in Berlin and forced into prostitution. The man behind the kidnapping is a respected businessman. He is on the wanted list, but so far nothing has been proven against him. This changes when a young female detective becomes involved in the investigation.

An unhappy child, accompanied by his dog, runs away from home and is befriended by a gangster on the lam.

Ichiro Yoshida, the father of the boy Kiyoshi, who has been repatriated from China, returns home after a ten-year separation. The father, who has been estranged from his son for many years, pays no attention to the boy, often punishes him unfairly, and gives all his tenderness to his little daughter, who was born after his return. The boy sees all the injustice of his father and, offended, leaves home. The father realized that he was wrong, that he was guilty before his son. The mother finds the boy and brings him home. The father and the son become friends from that day on.

A Parisian sewer worker longs for a rise in status and a beautiful wife. He rescues a girl from the police, lives with her in a barren flat on the seventh floor, and then marches away to war.

During the Second World War, in 1943, two French prisoners, François and Michel, escape from Stalag B377 in northern Germany near the Baltic Sea. They meet another escaped compatriot, Pierre, who has donned the uniform of a German officer and joins them. Their goal: to reach neutral Sweden. To get there, they'll have to walk part of the way, then take a train to the coast and, from there, find a way to cross the sea to the shores of Sweden.

Ulrich Mühe plays a German businessman who was born completely without scruples. This makes him an eminently suitable candidate for success in the chaotic years after World War I. The shameless man's story is contrasted with that of his polar opposite, a Jewish anarchist.

A Harvard man fights a railroad baron with a disguise and the power of the press.