Newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.
In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
Dr. Henry Jekyll believes that there are two distinct sides to men - a good and an evil side. He believes that by separating the two, man can become liberated. He succeeds in his experiments with chemicals to accomplish this and transforms into Hyde to commit horrendous crimes. When he discontinues use of the drug, it is already too late.
Henry Frankenstein pieces together body parts in the hope of bringing a human-like creature to life. The mad scientist’s dreams are shattered by his monstrous creation awakening with rage to a world that hates and fears him.
A hard-working mother inches towards disaster as she divorces her husband and starts a successful restaurant business to support her spoiled daughter.
A bumbling tramp desires to build a home with a young woman, yet is thwarted time and time again by his lack of experience and habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time..
After the death of a United States Senator, idealistic Jefferson Smith is appointed as his replacement in Washington. Soon, the naive and earnest new senator has to battle political corruption.
Walter Burns is an irresistibly conniving newspaper publisher desperate to woo back his paper’s star reporter, who also happens to be his estranged wife. She’s threatening to quit and settle down with a new beau, but, as Walter knows, she has a weakness: she can’t resist a juicy scoop.
Three brothers stop off for a night in the town of Tombstone. The next morning they find one of their brothers dead and their cattle stolen. They decide to take revenge on the culprits.
Working-class British housewife Myra Savage reinvents herself as a medium, holding seances in the sitting room of her home with the hidden assistance of her under-employed, asthmatic husband, Billy. In an attempt to enhance her credibility as a psychic, Myra hatches an elaborate, ill-conceived plot to kidnap a wealthy couple's young daughter so that she can then help the police "find" the missing girl.
In Depression-era West Virginia, a serial-killing preacher hunts two young children who know the whereabouts of a stash of money.
Dr. Jekyll believes good and evil exist in everyone and creates a potion that allows his evil side, Mr. Hyde, to come to the fore. He faces horrible consequences when he lets his dark side run amok.
The story of journalist Edward R. Murrow's stand against Senator Joseph McCarthy's anti-communist witch-hunts in the early 1950s.
In a chaotic 19th-century Paris teeming with aristocrats, thieves, psychics, and courtesans, theater mime Baptiste is in love with the mysterious actress Garance. But Garance, in turn, is loved by three other men: pretentious actor Frederick, conniving thief Lacenaire, and Count Edouard of Montray.
German journalist Philip Winter has a case of writer’s block when trying to write an article about the United States. He decides to return to Germany, and while trying to book a flight, encounters a German woman and her nine year old daughter Alice doing the same. The three become friends (almost out of necessity) and while the mother asks Winter to mind Alice temporarily, it quickly becomes apparent that Alice will be his responsibility for longer than he expected.
May 1945. In a small town of the province of Kazakhstan, far from the front of the war draws to a close, young Vladik and Mary, and Akezhan, a boy a bit ‘largest are among the displaced. It is through the eyes of the latter, his feelings and his reactions, that we enter into intimacy with the different characters and their stories.
The true, harrowing story of a young Jewish girl who, with her family and their friends, is forced into hiding in an attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
Old houses in Zagreb are destroyed in order to build new, bigger blocks. A teacher who lives in one of these houses allows a stranger to share his home with him. The stranger has a fascination with statistics, and claims he can predict crimes based on statistical analyses. When a predicted murder did not occur, the stranger is adamant that the whole town will suffer unless a balance is achieved - and he leaves.
The story of a century: a decades-long second World War leaves plague and anarchy, then a rational state rebuilds civilization and attempts space travel.
Kanji Watanabe is a middle-aged man who has worked in the same monotonous bureaucratic position for decades. Learning he has cancer, he starts to look for the meaning of his life.