A bold crime caper about muckraking journalist Hans Steindecker, who happens to witness a spectacular murder. Shortly afterwards, he makes the acquaintance of Nelly who desperately wants to leave the country and asks for Steindecker′s assistance. Without giving a second thought, he agrees, and only after Nelly has disappeared does he realize that the young woman duped him.
After eight years in exile Martin returns to Berlin. He was involved in the German Revolution of 1918/1919 and had to leave the country as a result. Impoverished and lonely, he struggles on alone until the market saleswoman Hanne offers him shelter, although she does not have much money either. They fall in love and Martin even finds work on the construction site for the subway through Tempelhofer Feld. One day, however, he collapses there, whereupon the pregnant Hanne tries to nurse him back to health.
The story of a beautiful, vivacious gypsy girl and the two doomed men who fall for her.
On the surface a straightforward tale of the search for a buried treasure, the film is a textbook example of German expressionism, with the passions of the protagonists conveyed as much through symbolism as action.
It begins with a Tannhäuser performance and ends with the premiere of The Tales of Hoffmann. In between a young ingénue cast in her first big role, the Hoffmann rehearsals, the theatre director and his stage director exchanging cynicisms, a budding love affair. Gründgens at his most repulsive, trying to woo both lovers. And a hair-raising finale. Add to this some snappy dialogue and "pre-code" scenes that make you sit up and stare.
During a test run for a large race in Sicily the racing car driver Bettina Bang gets into an accident and is saved by a secretive person unknown to her. It later turns out that the unknown man is the race car driver Harry Bredow.
Acrobat assumes identity of jailed fellow-artist to take over a theatre which had been bequeathed to him. He is suspected of murdering the acrobat but is cleared in the end.
