Down-on-his-luck veteran Tsugumo Hanshirō enters the courtyard of the prosperous House of Iyi. Unemployed, and with no family, he hopes to find a place to commit seppuku—and a worthy second to deliver the coup de grâce in his suicide ritual. The senior counselor for the Iyi clan questions the ronin’s resolve and integrity, suspecting Hanshirō of seeking charity rather than an honorable end. What follows is a pair of interlocking stories which lay bare the difference between honor and respect, and promises to examine the legendary foundations of the Samurai code.
Three partisans bound by a strong friendship return home after the war, but the clash with everyday reality puts a strain on their bond.
A dying man in his forties recalls his childhood, his mother, the war and personal moments that tell of and juxtapose pivotal moments in Soviet history with daily life.
The cruel and abusive headmaster of a boarding school, Michel Delassalle, is murdered by an unlikely duo -- his meek wife and the mistress he brazenly flaunts. The women become increasingly unhinged by a series of odd occurrences after Delassalle's corpse mysteriously disappears.
A young man has a renewed interest in his girlfriend when he takes a job that separates the two.
Traveling through an unnamed European country on the brink of war, sickly, intellectual Ester, her sister Anna and Anna's young son, Johan, check into a near-empty hotel. A basic inability to communicate among the three seems only to worsen during their stay. Anna provokes her sister by enjoying a dalliance with a local man, while the boy, left to himself, has a series of enigmatic encounters that heighten the growing air of isolation.
In 1916, a Chicago steel worker accidentally kills his supervisor and flees to the Texas panhandle with his girlfriend and little sister to work harvesting wheat in the fields of a stoic farmer.
An “experimental soap opera” centered on a Harlem nurse, her husband, her father-in-law, and her lover.
At a village railway station in occupied Czechoslovakia, a bumbling dispatcher’s apprentice longs to liberate himself from his virginity. Oblivious to the war and the resistance that surrounds him, this young man embarks on a journey of sexual awakening and self-discovery, encountering a universe of frustration, eroticism, and adventure within his sleepy backwater depot.
This deceptively simple tale of a bored English couple travelling to Italy to find a buyer for a house inherited from an uncle is transformed by Roberto Rossellini into a passionate story of cruelty and cynicism as their marriage disintegrates around them.
Set at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, this documentary mixes images of water and the town with performers and audience. The film progresses from day to night and from improvisational music to Gospel. It's a concert film that suggests peace and leisure, jazz at a particular time and place.
A moving world of spirits and ghosts, condemned to brush against one another without really meeting since they have all emerged from a single perpetual dream: that of a young man who no longer wants to wake up, immersed as he is in this world of fascinating spectres.
A magistrate reconstructs the murder of Costas Ghoussis, a labourer who was killed by his wife and her lover.
Meeting by chance when they return to their tiny California hometown, two former high-school sweethearts reflect on their shared past.
When a mysterious stranger muscles into two rival yakuza gangs, Tokyo's underworld explodes with violence.
During the Klondike Gold Rush, a misanthropic cattle driver and his talkative elderly partner run afoul of the law in Alaska and are forced to work for a saloon owner to take her supplies into a newly booming but lawless Candian town.
The Ciraulo family lives in the miserable district of Palermo called "Zen". When one of their children dies in a shootout between mafia gangsters they receive compensation and buy a luxury black Volvo. Things go wrong when Trancredi, another son, takes the car out and damages the car door.
Cerasella escapes just before her marriage with Alfredo and meets Bruno, the son of a wealthy industrialist.
A young man finds himself attracted to a cold and unfeeling waitress who may ultimately destroy them both.
In the village of Viggiù, the firemen organize various skits and performances in their theater, inviting all the celebrities known at that time.