Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.
An aging, reclusive Southern belle plagued by a horrifying family secret descends into madness after the arrival of a lost relative.
In Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, gifted but volatile folk musician Llewyn Davis struggles with money, relationships, and his uncertain future.
In Tiger Bay, the docklands of Cardiff, rough-and-tumble street urchin Gillie witnesses the brutal killing of a young woman at the hands of visiting Polish sailor Korchinsky. Instead of reporting the crime to the authorities, Gillie merely pockets a prize for herself — Korchinsky's shiny black revolver — and flees the scene. When Detective Graham discovers that Gillie has the murder weapon, the fiery young girl weaves a web of lies to throw him off course.
Fed up with the sea, Paul, a Swiss mechanic working in the noisy bowels of a merchant ship, lands in Lisbon.
In 1850s Louisiana, the willfulness of a tempestuous Southern belle threatens to destroy all who care for her.
A German living in India during World War II is blackmailed by the English to impersonate an SS officer on board a cargo ship leaving Japan for Germany carrying a large supply of rubber for tyres. His mission is to disable the scuttling charges so the captain cannot sink the ship if they are stopped by English warships.
The coquettish granddaughter of a respected small-town judge is stranded at a bootleggers’ hide-out, subjected to an act of nightmarish sexual violence, and plunged into a criminal underworld that threatens to swallow her up completely.
Living in Kentucky prior to the Civil War, Amantha Starr is a privileged young woman. Her widowed father, a wealthy plantation owner, dotes on her and sends her to the best schools. When he dies suddenly Amantha's world is turned upside down. She learns that her father had been living on borrowed money and that her mother was actually a slave and her father's mistress.
An adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play about a restless young warehouse worker and would-be poet, Tom Wingfield, his fragile, reclusive sister, Laura, and his colorful but overbearing mother, Amanda, all living together in a shabby apartment in St. Louis during the Depression and struggling to dilute the grim realities of daily living by way of memories, fantasies, and grandiose dreams about the future.
Story of a young, inexperienced ship captain named Marlow, who struggles in solitude during the voyage with disease, insubordinate crew and vagaries of weather.
George Raft plays a sailor who sets out to solve his father's mysterious death.
An American Merchant Marine captain, rescued from a Chinese Communist jail by local villagers, is "shanghaied" into transporting the entire village to Hong Kong on an ancient paddle steamer.
A Southern belle's flirtation with a working man leads to tragedy.
A U.S. Navy crew aboard a merchant marine ship battle Nazis.
At the end of the Civil War, Belle Gatlin Barlowe, a widowed mother of three, faces uncertainty as she attempts to defend her family's land by any means necessary. When the corrupt local bank pushes Belle into becoming an outlaw, the stakes become personal, setting off a chain of events that force her to question whether it's better to be lawful or to survive.
Virginia Tregan returns to her home in the U.S. Deep South from a sojourn in Paris only to discover that her family plantation and its holdings have been lost. She determines to recoup her family's fortune.
Femme fatale Flora marries a titled European to save the family planation. Her husband and a rival fall to their deaths in a glacier. Next Flora weds her sister Margaret's love Admah. She bleeds him dry, until he goes to prison.
After tragedy, a young girl falls for a boy from a powerful political dynasty. But the opposition that's current, and secrets they hold in the past threaten to destroy them and unravel the city of New Orleans.
In this comedy, three merchant marines get into all kinds of trouble. Two of the salts have just broken off their engagements after meeting other, more desirable women.