Leonard Steckel

In this classic German thriller, Hans Beckert, a serial killer who preys on children, becomes the focus of a massive Berlin police manhunt. Beckert's heinous crimes are so repellant and disruptive to city life that he is even targeted by others in the seedy underworld network. With both cops and criminals in pursuit, the murderer soon realizes that people are on his trail, sending him into a tense, panicked attempt to escape justice.

Carla Zachanassian had a child by Serge Miller as a teenager. When Serge refused to marry her, she was driven out of town. By her own wit and cunning, she has returned as a multi-millionaire for a visit. The town lays out the red carpet expecting big things from Carla, only to learn that her sole purpose is to see Serge Miller killed...

A young shoemaker is arrested for stealing a small amount of money, and is jailed for fifteen years. Upon his release, he wants to get a permit to get a job and start anew, but finds that without a job he can't get a permit, and without a permit he can't get a job. Ensnared in the absurd net of Prussian bureaucracy, he can't see any way out. That is, until he enters a thrift shop and spots a Prussian officer's uniform that fits him like a second skin...

Dr. Fritz Böhler is a prisoner of war doctor in the Soviet POW camp 5110/47 near Stalingrad. Despite the harshest conditions, he tries to help his fellow prisoners with the simplest means. But when his assistant Dr. Schultheiss falls in love with the Russian doctor Alexandra Kasalinskaja, Schultheiss not only endangers his own life - because Alexandra is the lover of First Lieutenant Markow.

Three Foreign Legionnaires - Luigi, Pat and Kurt - desert during the Algerian war because they have had enough of the inhumane war machine. But their comrade Robert intercepts them and decides to have them court-martialed. On their way to Algiers, they pick up young Madeleine, who has just survived an attack by insurgents. Suddenly Robert changes his mind and joins the deserters. Madeleine realizes that she is now a prisoner of the four foreign legionnaires and must make her own escape.

A series of knife murders have an odd feature about them; the victims find that their luggage has been packed for them just before their deaths. Scotland Yard investigates, and discover that the murders are linked to an addictive drug called Mescadrine.

An impoverished count has to work as a chauffeur but because of his good looks attracts women, one of them wealthy enough to solve his problem.

The action takes place in a central German town in the 1920s. A Jewish factory owner is accused of murdering his accountant. The German nationalist investigating judge, who is determined to have a Jewish perpetrator, still sees Blum as the perpetrator even when evidence of the actual murderer, a former Freikorp fighter, is found. The Social Democratic court president from Berlin sends a criminal investigator to tear apart the judge's chain of evidence.

During a concert tour, famous tenor Riccardo Gatti meets Lixie at an Aida rehearsal and takes her for a ballet dancer. She is in fact trying to get a position for her boyfriend, so she accepts Gatti's date for supper. When she runs away he publishes a newspaper ad offering to give a concert anywhere she chooses if she shows up. She chooses a swimming pool hoping to discourage him, but he accepts.

The niece of a shady tavern-keeper of Port Said, surrounded by dangerous men who haunt the ports, meets a man whom she will love and with whom she flees.

Elisabeth, wife of a landowner, has kept from her husband for twenty years that their daughter is not his. Rather, she is the result of an affair with a musician she was dating shortly before their marriage. Now this man, by now a famous concert pianist, enters her life again. Elisabeth resists the temptation to sink once again into the arms of her romantic lover. Since she loves her husband, she stays with him and continues to keep her secret...

Crew and cast members talk about the making of the 1962 film 'Das Geheimnis der schwarzen Koffer'.

Film by Waschneck.

Biography of the famous German actress Renate Müller, who died in 1937 under unsettled circumstances; While doing her first movie for the UFA in Berlin, she meets the elderly secretary-general Dr. Simon and is impressed by his charm. Although her Nazi-friend Volker discourages her to befriend a Jew, they start dating. While she ascends to one of the most famous German actresses of her time, Simon is suffering more and more under the Nazi regime.

Several inhabitants of a big apartment building get involved in a series of lawsuits.

In a small Hungarian village, a priest discovers a girl named Gitta who can sing beautifully. He takes Gitta with him and turns her into a celebrated revue star. After a quarrel with the priest, she runs away and meets a young composer named Peter, who does not know that she is a successful singer.