Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu

Rex and Saskia, a young couple in love, are on vacation when they stop at a busy service station. Saskia is abducted in broad daylight and three years pass with no answers or closure surrounding her disappearance. Rex has nearly given up all hope when he suddenly begins receiving letters from her abductor.

Josselin Beaumont, a French secret agent, is tasked with assassinating Njala, the president for life of Malawi in Africa. A shift in French policy means that assassinating Njala is no longer an option. But instead of recalling their agent, high-ranking officials deliberately sacrifice Beaumont by handing him over to the Malawian authorities. Arrested, tried, and imprisoned, he nevertheless manages to escape. Back in Paris after a two-year absence, he informs his superiors through Colonel Martin that he will fulfill his contract during Njala’s upcoming official visit to Paris between the 12th and 15th of this month, and that he has a few scores to settle with the D.G.S.E. The question is, should Beaumont be stopped or not?

A quiet and inconspicuous man rents an apartment in Paris where he finds himself drawn into a rabbit hole of dangerous paranoia.

In this whimsical fable, Resnais deftly interweaves three story lines: the creation of an early-20th-century utopia; romantic high jinks at a school conference; and a fantasy sparked by F/X pioneer Georges Méliès.

The film follows four families, with different nationalities (French, German, Russian and American) but with the same passion for music, from the 1930s to the 1960s. The various story lines cross each other time and again in different places and times, with their own theme scores that evolve as time passes. The main event in the film is the Second World War, which throws the stories of the four musical families together and mixes their fates. Although all characters are fictional, many of them are loosely based on historical musical icons (Édith Piaf, Josephine Baker, Herbert von Karajan, Glenn Miller, Rudolf Nureyev, etc.) The Boléro dance sequence at the end brings all the threads together.

In the 1930s, Agaguk lives his traditional Inuit life. But one day, there is a murder in the tribe and Agaguk becomes a suspect. Soon he becomes persecuted by Henderson, a mean mountie, and he must flee through the cold winter of Northern Quebec.

Paris, France, 1942, during the Nazi occupation. Robert Klein, a successful art dealer who benefits from the misfortunes of those who are ruthlessly persecuted, discovers by chance that there is another Robert Klein, apparently a Jewish man; someone with whom he could be mistakenly identified, something dangerous in such harsh times.

What there is of a plot in this drama serves mainly as a vehicle for the exploration of character. In the story, Michel (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) is a recent widower. As the story opens, he and his friend Andre (Philippe Nahon) are sharing a drink on Christmas Eve. He takes a yellow scarf from a woman he knows (Laura Morante) and teasingly refuses to return it. Throughout the remainder of the film, the scarf reappears, as does the woman, until they wind up in bed together at the end of the film. Before that happens, Michel wanders around Paris, viewing the festivities with a jaundiced eye which serves to heighten the unattractiveness of those he observes. Later he has dinner with a group at Andre's house, and his poor opinion of human nature is amply supported by the events that occur then.