The story begins in a New York City courtroom, where an 19-year-old boy from a slum is on trial for allegedly stabbing his father to death. Final closing arguments are presented, and the judge then instructs the jury to decide whether the boy is guilty of murder. The judge further informs them that a guilty verdict will be accompanied by a mandatory death sentence.
"Pumpkin" (Tim Roth) and "Honey Bunny" (Amanda Plummer) are having breakfast in a diner, and discussing their life as robbers. They decide to rob the restaurant after realizing they could make money off the customers as well as the business, as they did during their previous heist. Moments after they initiate the hold-up, the scene breaks off and the title credits roll.
After breaking his leg photographing a racetrack accident, professional photographer L. B. "Jeff" Jefferies (James Stewart) is confined to his Greenwich Village apartment, using a wheelchair while he recuperates. His rear window looks out onto a small courtyard and several other apartments. During a summer heat wave, he passes the time by watching his neighbors, who keep their windows open to stay cool. The tenants he can see include a dancer he nicknames "Miss Torso", a lonely woman he nicknames "Miss Lonelyhearts", a composer-pianist, several married couples, a middle-aged sculptor, and Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr), a traveling jewelry salesman with a bedridden wife.
Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) is pulled from her training at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia by Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) of the Bureau's Behavioral Science Unit. He assigns her to interview Hannibal Lecter, a former psychiatrist and incarcerated cannibalistic serial killer, whose insight might prove useful in the pursuit of a serial killer nicknamed "Buffalo Bill", who skins his female victims' corpses.
Leone "Léon" Montana (Jean Reno) is a hitman (or "cleaner", as he refers to himself) living a solitary life in New York City's Little Italy. His work comes from a mafioso named Tony (Danny Aiello). Léon spends his idle time engaging in calisthenics, nurturing a houseplant, and watching old films.
L'histoire se déroule en 1981, à Gotham City. Arthur Fleck travaille dans une agence de clowns. Méprisé et incompris par ceux qui lui font face, il mène une morne vie en marge de la société et habite dans un immeuble miteux avec sa mère Penny. Un soir, il se fait agresser dans le métro par trois hommes alcoolisés qui le brutalisent, le poussant à les tuer en retour. Son geste inspire à une partie de la population l'idée de s'en prendre eux aussi aux puissants ; Arthur bascule peu à peu dans la folie et finit par devenir le Joker, un dangereux tueur psychopathe victime d'hallucinations.
Tony Wendice (Ray Milland), an ex-professional tennis player, lives in a ground floor flat with his socialite wife, Margot (Grace Kelly). Tony retired after Margot complained about his busy schedule and she began an affair with American crime-fiction writer Mark Halliday (Robert Cummings), which Tony secretly discovered. Tony devises a plan to have Margot murdered.
The story begins with the closing moments of a rather dull government lecture and slide show on agricultural policy, after which the leader of the security police of a right-wing military-dominated government (Dux) takes over the podium for an impassioned speech describing the government's program to combat leftism, using the metaphors of "a mildew of the mind", an infiltration of "isms", or "sunspots".
A second-rate boarding school is run by the tyrannical and mean Michel Delassalle (Meurisse). The school, though, is owned by Delassalle's teacher wife, the frail Christina (Clouzot), and Delassalle flaunts his relationship with Nicole Horner (Signoret), a teacher at the school. Rather than antagonism, the two women are shown to have a somewhat close relationship, primarily based on their apparent mutual hatred of Michel, who is physically and emotionally abusive to both.
The film opens with newsreel footage, including the farewell address in 1961 of outgoing President Dwight D. Eisenhower, warning about the build-up of the "military-industrial complex". This is followed by a summary of John F. Kennedy's years as president, emphasizing the events that, in Stone's thesis, would lead to his assassination. This builds to a reconstruction of the assassination on November 22, 1963. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison subsequently learns about potential links to the assassination in New Orleans. Garrison and his team investigate several possible conspirators, including private pilot David Ferrie, but are forced to let them go after their investigation is publicly rebuked by the federal government. Kennedy's suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is killed by Jack Ruby, and Garrison closes the investigation.
Two brilliant young aesthetes, Brandon Shaw (Dall) and Phillip Morgan (Granger), strangle to death a former classmate, David Kentley (Dick Hogan), in their apartment. They commit the crime as an intellectual exercise; they want to prove their superiority by committing the "perfect murder".
Le romancier Harlan Thrombey convie dans son manoir sa famille, aussi excentrique que dysfonctionnelle, pour célébrer son 85e anniversaire. Mais le lendemain matin, le riche patriarche est retrouvé mort la gorge tranchée. Alors que tout indique un suicide, le détective privé Benoit Blanc s'invite dans l'enquête de l'inspecteur Elliott et commence à suspecter un meurtre.
The story may not be linear and exhibits several instances of temporal disruption. A dark-haired woman (Harring) escapes her own murder, surviving a car accident on Mulholland Drive. Injured and in shock, she descends into Los Angeles and sneaks into an apartment which an older, red-headed woman has just vacated. An aspiring actress named Betty Elms (Watts) arrives at the same apartment and finds the dark-haired woman confused, not knowing her own name. The dark-haired woman assumes the name "Rita" after seeing a poster for the film Gilda (1946), starring Rita Hayworth. To help Rita remember her identity, Betty looks in Rita's purse, where she finds a large amount of money and an unusual blue key.
In 1975, three children, Jimmy, Sean, and Dave, are playing on the streets of Boston when a stranger approaches them. Since the stranger has a badge and is wearing a suit, the children assume that he is a police officer. The stranger orders Dave to enter his car, and Dave obeys, but this leads to him being sexually abused and locked inside a basement for four days, after which he manages to escape.
During the Korean War, the Soviets capture a U.S. platoon and take them to Manchuria in Communist China. Some days later, all but two of the soldiers return to U.S. lines and Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw is credited with saving their lives in combat. Upon the recommendation of the platoon's commander, Captain Bennett Marco, Raymond is awarded the Medal of Honor for his reported heroism. When asked to describe him, Marco and the other soldiers automatically respond, "Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." Deep down, however, they know that Shaw is a cold, sad, unsympathetic loner.