Scientist Martin Fellmann is tormented by an irrational fear of knives and the irresistible compulsion to murder his wife. Driven to the brink of madness by fantastic nightmares, he encounters a psychoanalyst who offers to treat the perplexing malady.

During a dinner given by a wealthy baron and his wife, attended by four of her suitors in a 19th century German manor, a shadow-player rescues the marriage by giving all the guests a vision what might happen tonight if the baron stays jealous and the suitors do not reduce their advances towards his beautiful wife. Or was it a vision?

Baruch Mayer, son of an orthodox rabbi from a poor shtetl in Galizia, decides to break with the family tradition and leave the shtetl to become an actor.