Kleist's classical play shows how Judge Adam attempts to conceal his drunken midnight ramblings in the course of which a neighbor's precious jug has been broken and a woman's bedroom violated. Try as he might to cover his tracks, his bruises, blunders, and malapropisms betray him. The production afforded Emil Jannings a grand exercise in physical humor, an impressive display of an out-of-control body's lust, sloth, and gluttony. The Nazi adaptation focuses its attentions on how justice and civil society have been undermined by a servant of the state who has allowed his private pursuits to interfere with his public duties. The narrative task rests in putting things back into place, restoring a community's clockwork order. Interestingly, The Broken Jug was reputed to be Hitler's favorite film.