Jack Clifford caught in a web on intrigue attempts to extricate himself.

German silent film

Thanatos is none other than death, and he's tired of bringing home lost souls. Finally, he too wants to taste earthly life, just live for three days like a human on earth, feel, love and suffer like the humanoids. His wish is granted, and Thanatos is allowed to walk as a normal mortal for three days. But soon he become disgusted with the behavior of the humans, till he in the third day is confronted with the love of a beautiful girl, Phaleria.

Gerhard Lamprecht sketches a cross-section of Germany's new post-war society, with its winners, social climbers, and losers, represented by the social microcosm of an apartment building. The gossip-mad Frau Mierig from the rear building gives the newly-arrived Frau Kaminski, the janitor's wife, a lively initiation into the tenants and their peculiarities.

This movie, directed by Richard Oswald, is based on the operetta "Les contes de Hoffmann" by Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), which is a genial musical potpourri from various short stories and novels by the Prussian writer, composer, painter, lawyer and judge E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822). While Hoffmann's literary work was longtime considered to be merely fantastical, it was finally researched, in the last years, according to its metaphysical background. Characteristic for Hoffmann's work is his life-long fight against rationalism and for the revelation of nature morte, culminating mostly in carnival-like scenes anticipating literary techniques only described in the works of Bachtin and Bachelard.