The perfect body as an object of cult worship. Based on the mass sports and body worship movement of the 1920s, the film propagates physical training and shows in stylized documentary scenes aspects of physical hygiene, gymnastics, sports and dancing as well as scenes in which supposed sportsmen of antiquity pose naked.

Murderer “Boss” Huller—after having spent ten years in prison—breaks his silence to tell the warden his story.

The movie follows two distinct plot lines until the two eventually merge: the first is that of the bored middle-aged man seeking a departure from monotony in his life; the second is that of the blind man and the little boy, his grandson, who are interdependent. None of the characters have been given names and are therefore referred to only by description. The city is an expressionistic nightmare, a dangerous and chaotic place.

A man must choose between his mother and his wife as the rivalry ratchets up throughout New Year's Eve. Like Pick's previous films, New Year's Eve does not use intertitles.