After a middle-aged murderess is pardoned and released from prison early, she goes to live with a friend in Wisconsin who helps her begin her new life, until the local doctor shows interest in the murderess and threatens to come between the two women.

After closing a business deal for his beloved empire in New York, a young Italian imperialist seeks out his supposedly successful brother in the desert, but finds him emotionally and mentally devastated by the unforgiving American landscape.

A radio show in New York broadcasts an essay about a man who goes on a killing spree, but skirts the law because he is the nephew of a prominent judge.

When a young black man from the Bronx unwittingly becomes an accomplice to the murder of a police officer, he must protect the murderer (his best friend) and flee the life he used to know.

In World War I era Britain, an Oxford University dean tells his colleague about the arm of war that stretched to his small English town and changed the life of the community stonemason. When the stonemason shares his idea for bringing down German planes, he doesn't expect to be so devastated by the death he causes.

In the early days of World War III, an American millionaire's daughter and a British aristocrat celebrate their wedding at a ritzy hotel. They hold lavish spectacles and debate about the nature of reality, while they anxiously consider the impending war.