Known for Acting
A Jewish chief of surgery in 1933 Germany remains blind to the rising Nazi threat, dismissing political dissent from his son and a patient, until his family faces increasing anti-Semitic persecution.
13-year old Thomas Berndorf, the son of the rich business man Alexander Berndorf, becomes friends with Hannes Wille, whose father works as foreman. They get to know each because Hannes sometimes is allowed to polish Berndorf′s Mercedes 300. They make a bet whose mother is the most beautiful. Hannes assumes that Mrs. Berndorf is only admired for her expensive jewellery. Thus, he suggests that Thomas should steal a collier from his mother. Out of solidarity, he also robs a golden brooch from his mother. At home at the Berndorfs, a severe crisis threatens Thomas′s parents′ "marriage of convenience", and financial hardships are following on the theft.
Berlin 1952, seven years after WWII. Four women are looking for a good man and happiness in the divided city. Their destinies are loosely connected through one person: the West Berlin dandy and womanizer, Conny.
France at the time of the Restoration. The young country gentleman Rastignac comes to Paris to study. He takes up residence in a poor boarding house, where his father Goriot, who has been excluded by his daughters, also lives. The penniless Rastignac is anxious to gain a foothold in Parisian society. His cousin advises him to take the rich banker's wife Delphine, one of Goriot's daughters, as his mistress, which he does. At the same time, however, he falls in love with the laundress Yvette. He is unable to make up his mind when boarding house guest Vautrin suggests a third option: To marry Victorine, the disinherited daughter of a millionaire, and kill her brother in a duel in order to get his inheritance after all. Rastignac agrees. This is his downfall. Instead of high society, he ends up in the gutter.
Professor Sonnenbruck is a scientist who is not particularly interested in politics. Even the meeting in 1943 with his former assistant Peters does not change him. He does not betray Peters, who has escaped from a concentration camp, but that is already enough for him. But after the war Sonnenrbruck gets into a conflict of conscience. He thought that science was finally free of politics again only to find the opposite happening at his university in Göttingen. A medical congress in the GDR brings him together with Peters, who is working on a major research contract there. Sonnenbruck decides to visit Peters.
