Maria Bard

Yearning for respectability, George finds he cannot escape the influence of his old criminal cohorts. When George refuses to pay "hush money" to the mob, his faithful wife Margarete Schlegel is killed. George resignedly returns to a life of crime, ultimately descending into madness. (answers.com)

The European mentality of this German silent was a bit racy for mainstream American tastes of the era; nevertheless, the images created by director Paul Czinner told this story well. A wife (Elizabeth Bergner) is bored by her overweight slob of a husband (Emil Jannings). She gives in to the temptation of a slickly seductive poet (Conrad Veidt). The cuckolded husband (a common role for Jannings) tries to convince the pair to stop the philandering, but the wife runs off with her lover anyway.

Set largely in France, England, and Spain, the film chronicles the plight of Germans caught by the outbreak of war and their frantic attempts to return to the Fatherland to join the battle. All of Germany's enemies receive equal disdain. The British, the French, the Poles, and the Jews are portrayed respectively as warmongers, profiteers and cowards. In the end, all that is important is returning to Germany.

Olga, a Russian refuge from Bolshevik terror has joined the Soviet secret police, the G.P.U. to find the man who killed her parents. Meanwhile a young Baltic couple are caught up in the schemes of the evil communists. Very obviously a propaganda film from wartime Nazi Germany.

The famous pilot Mabel Atkinson does not like reporters, and the famous reporter Jack Warren does not like famous women. He is looking for a nice, pretty, totally uninteresting girl.