Based around three of Hoffmann's tales; Klein Zaches, The Golden Pot and The Sandman, with the main character being Hoffmann himself.

Daniel and Clara are on a vacation in Italy. In the form of the mysterious "Sandman" Coppola, a figure from Daniel's childhood, returns to haunt him, while he succumbs to an obsessive love with an enigmatic woman of strange beauty: Olympia, who might be far more than she first appears to be...

Upstairs, in the moonlit and empty room, a little boy scared of the dancing shadows, encounters a figment of his vivid imagination: the horrible Sandman.

A Count marries a woman with illness that makes her suffer attacks of vampirism. The Count took flight in the wildest horror, and ran, without any idea where he was going or what he was doing, impelled by the deadliest terror, all about the walks in the park, till he found himself at the door of his own Castle as the day was breaking, bathed in cold perspiration. Involuntarily, without the capability of taking hold of a thought, he dashed up the steps, and went bursting through the passages and into his own bedroom.

While waiting for Stella to conclude her performance in the opera house next door, Hoffman recounts his 3 tragic loves: Olympia the mechanical doll, Giulietta the courtesan, and Antonia the young consumptive.

Clara finds herself in a magical world where her toys have come to life but must fight the evil mice who threaten the kingdom before she can return home.

Monk Medardus (Dieter Laser), administrator of the relic chamber of a Capuchin monastery, drinks from the elixirs of the devil and is confronted with the dark sides of his soul.

A young chambermaid finds a neglected nutcracker under a Christmas tree. It comes to life, but the Nutcracker is really an enchanted prince.

Young seminary student Franziskus (Benjamin Besson) has been ceremonially ordained. He wants to escape the harshness and injustice of the world and devote himself to the service of God in the quiet seclusion of a monastery. He is also hoping to forget the beautiful lady Aurelie (Jaroslava Schallerová), whose life he saved in a flooded brook and with whom he spent an amorous night. He knows that her father would never allow her to marry him. But the devil dressed in a monk's habit and under the name Viktorin (Andrzej Kopiczynski) intervenes in Franziskus's destiny and attempts to lead him astray. To do so he first uses the diabolical elixirs kept at the monastery as a rare relic. When the young monk gets expelled from the monastery, Viktorin prepares another trap with the help of Aurelie's stepmother Euphemie (Milena Dvorská).

The story of a gold smith who is so obsessed with his own craft that he murders his customers.

On Christmas Eve, a little girl falls asleep after a party at her home and dreams herself (or does she?) into a fantastic world where toys become larger than life. Her beloved Nutcracker comes to life and defends her from the Mouse King, then is turned into a Prince after Marie saves his life.

Several men have been murdered lately, mostly rich lovers on their way to meet their mistresses with gifts of fine jewelry. To fight this scourge, King Louis XIV decides to create a special court named "La chambre ardente", designed to find and punish the perpetrators of such heinous crimes. An unexpected person, Mademoiselle de Scudéry, the famous poetess, will find herself entangled in the web of a criminal intrigue linked with the jewel murders, along with a a goldsmith, his daughter and her fiancé...

A melancholy poet reflects on three women he loved and lost in the past: a mechanical performing doll, a Venetian courtesan, and the consumptive daughter of a celebrated composer.

One of the first movies made about the fairy tale Cinderella. The film is part of the current German expressionism. Because of that the film ends up being darker than the fairy tale itself.

Forced into marriage by his uncle, a man decides to fool him by marrying a life-like mechanical doll instead.

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.