导演劳埃德（迈克尔·凯恩 Michael Caine 饰）所执导的话剧《一丝不挂》即将上演。在上演的前一天晚上，劳埃德带着他的演员们正在进行最后的排练，因为这是一场以群戏为主的话剧，所以劳埃德不希望他的演员们在舞台上有一丝一毫的失误，可是着八个演员各有各的想法，各有各的个性，想要将他们撮合到一起顺利出演谈何容易。
首演定在迈阿密，还有三分钟就要正式开始演出了，就在这个节骨眼上，布鲁克因为一点点小事情开始闹情绪，躺在地上不肯起来，而塞尔斯顿索性就失去了踪迹，根据他的尿性，估计又在哪里烂醉如泥了。面对如此状况百出的现场，这场话剧真的能顺利开演吗？
81-year-old master, Jean-Marie Straub, once again invents and surprises with his latest film. Kommunisten consists of six parts, five of which have been taken from his earlier works. Straub does not aim to be self-reverential, but instead wants to make different blocks (of text, time, and languages) clash so as to highlight invisible elements of feelings and politics. It is a film about human adventure, from the past century to the one ahead. In this project, all the things that the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet have been based on for the past fifty years, find their most raw and recent form.
故事发生在二十世纪初的北爱尔兰贝尔法斯特，刚刚出狱没多久的约翰尼（詹姆斯·梅森 James Mason 饰）参与了一次抢劫行动，并且为了掩护队友而遭到了警察的枪击，约翰尼失手打死了警察，惹上了重罪，成为了全城通缉的对象，身负重伤的约翰尼体力不支，昏了过去。
穷的叮当响的无赖汉谢尔（F.J.麦考密 F.J. McCormick 饰）发现了约翰尼的踪迹，在他的身上看到了发财的法子，他将情报通告给神父汤姆（W.G. Fay 饰），却被凯瑟琳（凯思琳·赖安 Kathleen Ryan 饰）发现。凯瑟琳赶在谢尔之前找到了躲在疯画家鲁奇（罗伯特·牛顿 Robert Newton 饰）家中的约翰尼，就这样，两个人踏上了逃亡的旅途。
Two differences between this Austrian version and the generally available American version are immediately obvious: they differ both in their length and in the language of the intertitles. The American version is only 1,883 metres long - at 18 frames per second a difference of some 7 minutes to the Austrian version with 2,045 metres. Whereas we originally presumed only a negligible difference, resulting from the varying length of the intertitles, a direct comparison has nevertheless shown that the Austrian version differs from the American version both in the montage and in the duration of individual scenes. Yet how could it happen that the later regional distribution of a canonical US silent film was longer than the "original version"?
The prevalent American version of Blind Husbands does not correspond to the version shown at the premiere of 1919. This little-known fact was already published by Richard Koszarski in 1983. The film was re-released by Universal Pictures in 1924, in a version that was 1,365 feet (416 metres) shorter. At 18 frames per second, this amounts to a time difference of 20 minutes! "Titles were altered, snippets of action removed and at least one major scene taken out entirely, where von Steuben and Margaret visit a small local chapel." (Koszarski)
From the present state of research we can assume that all the known American copies of the film derive from this shortened re-release version, a copy of which Universal donated to the Museum of Modern Art in 1941. According to Koszarski the original negative of the film was destroyed sometime between 1956 and 1961 and has therefore been irretrievably lost. This information casts an interesting light on the Austrian version, which can be dated to the period between the summer of 1921 and the winter of 1922. Furthermore, the copy is some 200 metres longer than the US version of 1924. If one follows the details given by Richard Koszarski and Arthur Lennig, this means that, as far as both its date and its length are concerned, the Austrian version lies almost exactly in the middle between the (lost) version shown at the premiere and the re-released one.A large part of the additional length of the film can be traced to cuts that were made to the 1924 version in almost every shot. Koszarski describes how the beginning and the end of scenes were trimmed, in order to "speed up" the film. However, more exciting was the discovery that the Austrian version contains shots that are missing in the American one - shots/countershots, intertitles - and furthermore shows differences in its montage (i.e. the placing of the individual shots within a sequence). All this indicates that Die Rache der Berge constitutes the oldest and most completely preserved material of the film.
