Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them.
After a baron steals his scientific discoveries, runs away with his wife, and slaps him in public, a man joins a Parisian circus sideshow as a clown whose act consists of being slapped repeatedly and becomes infatuated with a showgirl colleague whose father intends to marry her off to the baron.
After years of drifting around, Willi Palko arrives in the lignite mining area. He was not only looking for a new job, but also wanted to finally settle down here.
Munich cab driver Herbert Sponer picks up American businessman Jack Mortimer at the train station. Suddenly Mortimer is shot while driving and Sponer has to try to avoid being suspected as the perpetrator.
When a former artisan is tricked into putting his sister up as collateral for a loan by a gangster boss in a crooked gambling casino it sets in motion the story of Ooka Echizen, the famed magistrate of Edo during the reign of Shogun Tsuneyoshi.
March, 1945: The insecure and hesitant reserve lieutenant Felix Bleck receives orders to lead a transport of 40 prisoners to the Western Front, where the men are to be burned up in a punishment battalion.