The Devil's Advocate 1977
A dying priest is commissioned to investigate the deeds of Giacomo Nerone, a dead wartime partisan, and find out if he truly is worthy of being canonized.
A dying priest is commissioned to investigate the deeds of Giacomo Nerone, a dead wartime partisan, and find out if he truly is worthy of being canonized.
A dead man is discovered in the machine room of the Randlingen sanatorium and nursing home. The man is Dr. Ulrich Borstli, the director of the institution. Constable Studer from the cantonal police takes over the investigation and soon realizes: it was no accident! The hospital director must have been beaten to death with a sandbag around midnight. The search for the perpetrator and motive proves difficult. The patient Pieterlein comes under suspicion because he has been on the run since the crime. However, Studer doesn't really believe in this solution and examines the friendly façade of the psychiatrist Borstli. He soon realizes that the solution must lie in the treatment methods of the nurses and doctors...
The maid of a paintbrush manufacturer gives birth to twins. The father is first suspected to be the master of the house and then his son-in-law.
Clemens and Bobi, two legation secretaries, are sent on a delicate mission by their minister: it concerns a red portfolio with secret papers, which the minister stuck under a bed mattress and forgot about when he met someone on a rendezvous. And to make things more difficult, the horny minister can't remember which room he left it in. After several incidents in different hotel rooms, neither secretary has found a thing. There's not a trace of the portfolio; but Clemens is more interested in Annette, the young lady in one of the hotel beds, than in the portfolio. He forgets his mission and can think only of her. Boni, in the meantime, has found his way into a room, where Olivia is staying and sees a red, leather folder there. But the woman throws him out in short order.
The focus of this wartime propaganda film from 1940 is the foreman Keith, who works at a Polish sawmill, not far from the German border. It is 1939 and the War is fast approaching. The Polish workers at the sawmill revolt and kill the mill's German owner, as well as threaten their German colleagues. Keith flees with the children of his dead boss and joins other German refugees on their way to safety across the borders of the Reich.
Dr. Hanna Burkhardt is a teacher by vocation: she is not only interested in teaching the pupils the subject matter, she also wants to be a human support and help them when necessary. The school authorities don't like this at all; in their eyes, she has failed several times. Her last chance is the ninth grade of a grammar school. At first, she has no access to the pupils. Only with Martin, a spoiled but lonely child of divorce, does Hanna develop a genuine relationship of trust. The rest of the class, however, remains dismissive until the day Hans, leader of the class jazz band, dies. His last wish was for the band to play at his grave, which the principal does everything in his power to prevent. Hanna, however, manages to get the class to play at the boy's grave - the ice is broken. Martin's diary, which is found in the school and in which the pupil confesses his love for her, almost becomes the teacher's undoing.
Constable Studer of the Bern cantonal police is stubborn and gnarled. Because of his nature, he has few friends. He has this in common with the murder victim: James Farny was known by everyone as "The Chinese". The man had traveled the world and now he has been found shot dead in the village cemetery: was it murder or did he kill himself? He had the gun in his hand. Studer doesn't believe it was suicide...