A ruthless real estate agent discovers a passion for piano and auditions with help from a young virtuoso, but the pressures of his corrupt career threaten to derail his musical aspirations.
London, England, on the eve of World War II. Guinevere Pettigrew, a strict governess who is unable to keep a job, is fired again. Lost in the hostile city, a series of fortunate circumstances lead her to meet Delysia LaFosse, a glamorous and dazzling American jazz singer whose life is a chaos ruled by indecision, a continuous battle between love and fame.
Gruber is a normal 16-year-old growing up in Budapest in 1962, but he has a problem -- how does he get to know the opposite sex? At the Sunday afternoon dance classes the young "ladies and gentlemen" hold each other while dancing, and that makes the lessons worth something. Otherwise, the pianist's attention wanders and the orchestra does not exactly play with a single-minded dedication. In fact, everybody seems to have other things on their minds, except for the enthusiastic dance instructor and his ever-smiling assistant.
Pianist David Helfgott, driven by his father and teachers, has a breakdown. Years later he returns to the piano, to popular if not critical acclaim.
Erika Kohut, a sexually repressed piano teacher living with her domineering mother, meets a young man who starts romantically pursuing her.
Charlie is a former classical pianist who has changed his name and now plays jazz in a grimy Paris bar. When Charlie's brothers, Richard and Chico, surface and ask for Charlie's help while on the run from gangsters they have scammed, he aids their escape. Soon Charlie and Lena, a waitress at the same bar, face trouble when the gangsters arrive, looking for his brothers.
18th century Vienna. Maria Theresia von Paradis, a gifted piano player and close friend of Mozart's, lost her eye-sight as a child. Desperate to cure their talented daughter, the Paradis entrust Maria to Dr. Mesmer, a forward-thinking-physician who gives her the care and attention that she requires. With the doctor's innovative techniques of magnetism, Maria slowly recovers her sight. But this miracle comes at a price as the woman progressively starts to lose her gift for music.
When car dealer Charlie Babbitt learns that his estranged father has died, he returns home to Cincinnati, where he discovers that he has a savant older brother named Raymond and that his father's $3 million fortune is being left to the mental institution in which Raymond lives. Motivated by his father's money, Charlie checks Raymond out of the facility in order to return with him to Los Angeles. The brothers' cross-country trip ends up changing both their lives.
When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.
The daughter of jazz pianist Joe Albany witnesses her beloved father's struggle -- and failure -- to kick his heroin habit.
The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.
An affair between a pianist and a teacher begins to disintegrate when girls from her school turn up missing.
A snowboarder, whose career was interrupted by an injury, meets a determined pianist who inspires him to pursue his Olympic dreams.
After a seven-year absence, Charlotte Andergast travels to Sweden to reunite with her daughter Eva. The pair have a troubled relationship: Charlotte sacrificed the responsibilities of motherhood for a career as a classical pianist. Over an emotional night, the pair reopen the wounds of the past. Charlotte gets another shock when she finds out that her mentally impaired daughter, Helena, is out of the asylum and living with Eva.
An IRS agent with a fateful secret embarks on an extraordinary journey of redemption by forever changing the lives of seven strangers.
A vacuum repairman moonlights as a street musician and hopes for his big break. One day a Czech immigrant, who earns a living selling flowers, approaches him with the news that she is also an aspiring singer-songwriter. The pair decide to collaborate, and the songs that they compose reflect the story of their blossoming love.
Gloria Wandrous, a promiscuous fashion model, falls in love with Weston Liggett, the hard drinking son of a working class family who has married into money.
Twins, separated at birth, end up as a Hong Kong gangster and a New York concert pianist. When the pianist travels to Hong Kong for a concert, the two inevitably get mistaken for each other.
A young black pianist becomes embroiled in the lives of an upper-class white family set among the racial tensions, infidelity, violence, and other nostalgic events in early 1900s New York City.
A classical musician from a working class background is sidetracked by his love for a wealthy, neurotic socialite.