Good Friends and Faithful Neighbors

After a yachting accident, a millionaire and his wife are shipwrecked on a desert island along with their former deckhand, Manuel.

Three Irwin Shaw short stories are dramatized. In "The Girls in Their Summer Dresses" a young married couple stop for a drink on a Sunday morning in Manhattan, and the conversation turns to the husband's fidelity. "The Monument" centers on the conflict between a popular bartender with a following in an upscale Irish bar in 1938 Manhattan and its owner, who is determined to introduce a more economical whiskey in the establishment over the barkeep's objections. In "The Man Who Married a French Wife" the influential American husband of a French woman is asked by her former lover, a former resistance fighter, to help him escape the country.

Blessed with a keen sense of smell and cursed with a philandering pornographer husband, a parasitic mother, and a pair of delinquent children, the long-suffering Francine Fishpaw turns to the bottle as her life falls apart -- until deliverance appears in the form of a hunk named Todd Tomorrow. Originally screened with "Odorama" scratch and sniff cards so the audience could (at their own risk) smell along with the film.

A successful TV star during the 1960s, former "Hogan's Heroes" actor Bob Crane projects a wholesome family-man image, but this front masks his persona as a sex addict who records and photographs his many encounters with women, often with the help of his seedy friend, John Henry Carpenter. This biographical drama reveals how Crane's double life takes its toll on him and his family, and ultimately contributes to his death.

Austin, Texas, is an Eden for the young and unambitious, from the enthusiastically eccentric to the dangerously apathetic. Here, the nobly lazy can eschew responsibility in favor of nursing their esoteric obsessions. The locals include a backseat philosopher who passionately expounds on his dream theories to a seemingly comatose cabbie, a young woman who tries to hawk Madonna's Pap test to anyone who will listen and a kindly old anarchist looking for recruits.

In Kyoto a young kimono maker with traditional ideas gets involved with a married professor.

A British medical doctor fights a cholera outbreak in a small Chinese village, while also being trapped at home in a loveless marriage to an unfaithful wife.

The story centers on a group of gossipy, high-society women who spend their days at the beauty salon and haunting fashion shows. The sweet, happily-wedded Mary Haines finds her marriage in trouble when shop girl Crystal Allen gets her hooks into Mary's man.

A heroic fire captain values dedication and service to others above all else, but the most important partnership in his life, his marriage, is about to go up in smoke.

A wealthy industrialist's wife gets into a big argument with him; to cool off, she goes on an ocean trip. He thinks she's left him for good, so he marries another woman. When his first wife returns, complications ensue.

Is love compatible with coupledom? And what of freedom and fidelity? These are some of the questions facing two married men.

A tobacco planter on Réunion island in the Indian Ocean becomes engaged through correspondence to a French woman he does not know. The woman that arrives does not look like the picture he received, but he marries her anyway.

In a well appointed villa in Bagheria, near Palermo, a couple, Silvio and Leda Pataneo, spend their days attempting to complete a novel, making love, and caring for a citrus grove that the local townfolk want to acquire. All framed against a political backdrop of class and cultural differences.

A female ex-con falls in love and hesitates to reveal her past.

An uptight documentary filmmaker and his wife find their lives loosened up a bit after befriending a free-spirited younger couple.

In 1970s Hollywood, Detective Philip Marlowe tries to help a friend who is accused of murdering his wife.

During the events of May 1968 in France, different worldviews of conflicting relatives collide in their family estate.

In the carefree days before World War I, introverted Austrian author Jules strikes up a friendship with the exuberant Frenchman Jim and both men fall for the impulsive and beautiful Catherine.

An actor on the skids is given one more chance to regain his stardom, as well as his self-respect, yet his alcoholism may prevent that from happening.

When Paula leaves her mate Pedro, he misses her and looks for comfort with his best friends, Javier and Sonia. Paula is having an affair with Javier. Pedro tries to find who is the secret lover of Paula, and hires a private eye. Meanwhile, while comforting Pedro, Sonia has a one night stand with him and Javier thinks she is cheating on him with her lesbian friend Luzia.