Wassa Schelesnowa, a manipulative matriarch who will stop at nothing to keep her business afloat and her family together. Infanticide, forgery, murder, blackmail, adultery, exile, and plain old-fashioned greed are the order of the day as Wassa's colorful clan tries to scheme its way out of the house and into financial independence.

Berlin's theatre crowd is excited about the new operetta "Frau Luna". But for the head of the city's vice police, who was invited to the dress rehearsal, the costumes for the ladies onstage are a bit too revealing. He demands the show be cancelled as offensive. The president of the Thusneldenbund has taken it upon himself to alert everyone about the growth of immorality in the capital. The theatre director Knopp has come up with an idea to convince these "fine" gentlemen to let the operetta go onstage again: He intends to win over the friendship of the moral police and then nothing will stand in the way of "Frau Luna" once more being performed.

Based on a novella by Bertolt Brecht.

Beleaguered by choppy editing and potholes in the script, this story is about the bond that develops between an aging, former railroad worker living in an abandoned theater and Willie, the wayward, alcoholic architect he shelters (Elliot Gould). The flaws in the script and story development, and the architect's exaggerated character traits, work against the concept of a growing friendship between the two men and leave the main thrust of the film in limbo. A subplot has a gang of street thugs chasing Willie all over the city in order to retrieve some photos of a murder he accidentally recorded. At the same time, Willie is trying to reconcile with his son, left in the care of his neglected wife. ...