Toni van Eyck

A scullery maid manages to con her way into being adopted by a wealthy factory owner and frees his nephew from an expensive girlfriend.

Toni van Eyck became known with her leading role in this early "Aufklärungsfilm" (education film) Gefahren der Liebe/A Woman Branded (Eugen Thiele, 1931) opposite Hans Stüwe. She played a rape victim, who finally becomes a murderess.

Based on the real life events of the 1927 Steglitzer Schülertragödie, in which several high school students planned murder-suicides.

Moritz Stiefel faces expulsion due to poor marks. When he is caught with an essay titled “Shame and Lust”, he is indeed kicked out – instead of classmate Melchior Gabor, who actually penned it. Gabor was drawing on his experiences with neighbourhood girl Wendla. Then Wendla turns up pregnant. Stiefel descends into despair ... Exploitation between Eros and Thanatos in this “sexual tragedy of youth” based on Frank Wedekind’s play. Setting the film in the 1920s provided a chance to explore “modern” youth culture, complete with cigarettes, jazz music, the gramophone, and a goodly bit of alcohol. Richard Oswald, a master of films of manners and young sex beginning in the 1910s, fully explores the temptations of the youthful body, even early childhood flirtatiousness. At the same time, with his target audience in mind, the film laments the bigotry and double standards of the adult world.

A recent rediscovery, master cinematographer Schüfftan’s only film as a director is a free-spirited, fast-paced ode to being young, free, hopeful... and completely broke.