Set against the backdrop of the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871, the film tells the story of Louise and Jean, whose love has no chance in times of open class struggle. Louise, a saleswoman in the department store 'The New Babylon' is a committed communard, Jean, a politically clueless young man from the countryside, is a soldier in the French army and is forced to fight the Commune. "The New Babylon" thrives on its furious pace and cartoonish exaggeration. In densely composed tableaux inspired by the paintings of the French Impressionists and the novels of Zola, Parisian life is restaged in Leningrad. The director duo Kosinzew & Trauberg developed a unique film aesthetic with a radical montage, whose experimental character makes the smoothing interventions of the censorship forgotten.