1923. L'arrivée de Diouchen, jeune soldat de l'Armée rouge, envoyé par le Komsomol à l'aoul de Koksaï en Kirghizie, provoque un attroupement. Le jeune homme se présente et explique sa mission : éduquer et apprendre à lire. La masse ignorante toise cet être étrange, puis, stupéfaite par ses propos, exprime son étonnement, se moque de lui et le plante, sur place, seul avec sa mission.
Le Japon en 1860, à l'aube de l'Ère Meiji. Un groupe d'assassins a pour but d'éliminer un personnage important du pays. Ils suspectent la présence d'un traître parmi eux, et leurs doutes tombent sur Niiro, un ronin, et son ami Kurihara l'aristocrate.
En Allemagne et durant les années 1930 à Düsseldorf, des femmes et des jeunes filles sont assassinées par un tueur en série. Il s’agit de Peter Kürten, un ouvrier amoureux d’Anna, une chanteuse de cabaret qui devient sa maîtresse. Elle découvre incidemment qu’il est le meurtrier et le dénonce à la police. Traqué par les forces de l’ordre, Peter se réfugie dans le cabaret, l’incendie, tue Anna et sera capturé par la police.
Les amours de deux êtres que tout oppose : Marie-Soleil, jolie blonde de 35 ans, artiste de cabaret, avec Axel, un ingénieur agronome de 10 ans son cadet. Ils s'aiment et bravent les qu'en-dira-t-on jusqu'à ce qu'elle ne le quitte, craignant de voir leur grand amour s'abîmer. Elle lui reviendra, mais refusera toujours de l'épouser...
Alors qu'une révolte paysanne en Thessalie se prépare en 1907, un syndicaliste est assassiné. Le fils du grand propriétaire terrien revient dans le domaine familial. Il a des idées libérales. Il s'oppose très vite à son frère aîné autant pour la gestion du domaine que pour le cœur d'une femme.
With the rise of Hitler, Sol Nazerman (Steiger), a German-Jewish university professor, was dragged to a concentration camp along with his family. He saw his two children die (one while riding in a cattle car) and his wife raped by Nazi officers in the camp. Now he operates a pawnshop in East Harlem, while living in an anonymous Long Island apartment. Numbed by his experiences, he has worked hard not to experience emotions. Nazerman is bitter and alienated, viewing the people around him as "rejects, scum." He is shown interacting cynically as he bargains with the many desperate characters pawning their goods.
Lemmy Caution is a secret agent with the code number of 003 from "the Outlands". Entering Alphaville in his Ford Mustang, called a Ford Galaxie, he poses as a journalist named Ivan Johnson, and claims to work for the Figaro-Pravda. He wears a tan overcoat that stores various items such as a M1911A1 Colt Commander automatic pistol. He carries a cheap Instamatic camera (new in 1965) with him and photographs everything he sees, particularly the things that would ordinarily be unimportant to a journalist.
The film takes place in Koishikawa, a district of Edo (the former name of the city of Tokyo), in the 19th century. Young Dr. Noboru Yasumoto (Yūzō Kayama) is the film's protagonist. Trained in a Dutch medical school in Nagasaki, the arrogant Yasumoto aspires to the status of personal physician of the Shogunate, a position currently held by a close relative; his father is already a well-established, highly competent physician. Yasumoto believes that he should progress through the safe, and well-protected, army structure of medical education. However, for Yasumoto's post-graduate medical training, he has been assigned to a rural clinic under the guidance of Akahige ("Red Beard"), Dr. Kyojō Niide (played by Toshiro Mifune). Dr. Niide may seem like a tyrannical task master, but in reality he is a compassionate clinic director. Initially, Yasumoto is livid at his posting, believing that he has little to gain from working under Akahige. Dr. Yasumoto feels that Dr. Niide is only interested in his medical notes and soon rebels against the clinic director. He refuses to wear his uniform, disdains the food and spartan environment, and enters the forbidden garden where he meets "The Mantis" (Kyōko Kagawa), a mysterious patient that only Dr. Niide can treat.
In Italy, two children, Michael (Martin Stephens) and Debbie (Elizabeth Dear), are aware that their mother, Moira (Maureen O'Hara) has left them for a lover, a famous Italian composer and they are staying at the Villa Fiorita. Michael convinces Debbie to run away to the Villa to fetch their mother, and forces her to sell her prized pony to afford the journey. They arrive, and the lover, Lorenzo (Rossano Brazzi) calls their father to inform him that the children have run away and that he will be sending them home. However, Michael falls ill and Lorenzo allows them both to stay. Debbie joins forces with Donna, the daughter of their mother's lover, to manipulate Moira into returning to Britain. A hunger strike by the girls ensues which fails and culminates in Moira slapping Debbie and Lorenzo spanking Donna. Lorenzo finally decides to send the children home but Michael and Donna attempt to run away on a sailboat during a storm. After the two nearly drown, Moira and Lorenzo agree that they have lost the battle, and a heartbroken Moira returns to England with her children.
Bernard Lawrence (Tony Curtis) is an American journalist stationed in Paris, France. A playboy, he has devised an ingenious system for juggling three different girlfriends: by dating stewardesses who are assigned to international routes on non-intersecting flight schedules, only one woman is in the country at any given time. He has their comings and goings timetabled with such precision that he can drop off his British United Airways girlfriend (Suzanna Leigh) for her outgoing flight and pick up his inbound Lufthansa girlfriend (Christiane Schmidtmer) on the very same trip to the airport—while his Air France girlfriend (Dany Saval) is in a holding pattern elsewhere.
La famille Calloway vit dans la forêt juste en dehors de la petite ville de Swiftwater en Nouvelle-Écosse. Le père Cam rêve de construire un sanctuaire pour les oies sauvages qui migrent. Mais la population de la ville trouve Cam trop excentrique. Cam et son fils Bucky décident d'amasser des fourrures pour récolter assez d'argent pour acheter un lac. Mais la somme récoltée ne suffit pas et ils sont contraints de vendre leur maison. La famille construit une nouvelle maison au bord du lac mais un promoteur envisage de construire une zone de loisirs dans la petite ville. Il propose à Cam en échange d'argent et de promesses d'aider à construire le sanctuaire de planter un champ de maïs pour attirer les oiseaux. Cam apprend par la suite que le but du promoteur est de faire un plan d'eau pour la chasse aux oies.
NATO Officer Andrea Rossi-Colombotti (Mastroianni) is a ladies man with an unusual libido: he can only seduce women in situations where his life is in danger. The film begins with him breaking into a Corsican girlfriends house; the girl, armed and voluptuous, believes Andrea a criminal and nearly shoots him before being seduced, but she later ends their relationship in the light of such an incident. Later, while spending an afternoon with an Asian air stewardess, he tries to achieve arousal by making up a situation about a dying relative, but the stewardess learns the sham and the liaison ends disastrously.
Laura Reynolds (Taylor) is a free-spirited, unwed single mother living with her young son Danny (Morgan Mason) in an isolated California beach house. She makes a modest living as an artist and home-schools her son out of concern that he will be compelled to follow stifling conventional social norms in a regular school. Danny has gotten into some trouble with the law through two minor incidents, which are in his mother's eyes innocent expressions of his natural curiosity and conscience rather than delinquency. Now with a third incident a judge (Torin Thatcher) orders her to send the boy to an Episcopal boarding school where Dr. Edward Hewitt (Burton) is headmaster, and his wife Claire (Eva Marie Saint) teaches. Edward and Claire are happily married with two young sons, but their life has become routine and their youthful idealism has been tamed by the need to raise funds for the school and please wealthy benefactors.
Six people travel by train overnight from Marseilles to Paris. When the train arrives at its destination, one of the passengers, a girl, is found dead in a sleeping berth. The police led by Inspector Grazzi investigate the other five passengers, suspecting that one of them was responsible. However, as the investigation is stepped up, the other passengers start turning up dead. It is then up to the last remaining two to solve the case, before they become the next victims.
Three robbers escape with loot from a heist, but during the escape, two of them are killed by the other one. Their dead bodies wash up on the shore after a maritime disaster, but a policeman, Yumisaka (Junzaburo Ban), becomes suspicious because they are not listed as passengers. The surviving robber Inukai (Rentaro Mikuni) is sheltered by a prostitute, Yae (Sachiko Hidari). In return, the robber gives her a large sum of money, and she is able to start a new life. The policeman follows Yae to Tokyo on the trail of the robber, but she refuses to cooperate with him.