The Tell-Tale Heart

Out of prison after a five-year stretch, jewel thief Tony turns down a quick job his friend Jo offers him, until he discovers that his old girlfriend Mado has become the lover of local gangster Pierre Grutter during Tony's absence. Expanding a minor smash-and-grab into a full-scale jewel heist, Tony and his crew appear to get away clean, but their actions after the job is completed threaten the lives of everyone involved.

Three stars appear in two separate but intertwined stories of romantic triangles gone wrong in this ambitious drama. In the first segment, Hagolin is a loutish construction worker with an unhappy wife, Eponine. The wife becomes involved with a swarthy working man, Larnier, and their passion knows no boundaries of caution or safety. Eventually, Eponine's and Larnier's lust drives them to madness, and they murder Hagolin. The second tale concerns an up-and-coming young lawyer, Claude, whose mentor is a highly successful veteran attorney, Lamerciere, with a beautiful young wife named Florence. Claude finds himself defending Larnier and Eponine, while Lamerciere dies of a heart attack after he discovers that Florence has been unfaithful to him with Claude.

Londoner Harry Fabian is a second-rate con man looking for an angle. After years of putting up with Harry's schemes, his girlfriend, Mary, becomes fed up when he taps her for yet another loan.

Nick Garcos comes back from his tour of duty in World War II planning to settle down with his girlfriend, Polly Faber. He learns, however, that his father was recently beaten and burglarized by mob-connected trucker Mike Figlia, and Nick resolves to get even. He partners with prostitute Rica, and together they go after Mike, all the while getting pulled further into the local crime underworld.

Timeworn Joe Collins and his fellow inmates live under the heavy thumb of the sadistic, power-tripping guard Captain Munsey. Only Collins' dreams of escape keep him going, but how can he possibly bust out of Munsey's chains?

After a former model is drowned in her bathtub, Detective James Halloran and Lieutenant Dan Muldoon attempt to piece together her murder.

The descendent of a ghost imprisoned for cowardice hopes to free the spirit by displaying courage when under duress.

An American scholar in Greece sets about improving the local prostitute with whom he is infatuated.

Set against the backdrop of a community mourning the recent MLK assassination, Black militants building up an arsenal of weapons in preparation for a race war are betrayed by one of their own.

Humble stamp dealer Otto Becker has little to do with international politics, so when he receives a surprise visit from his estranged twin brother and Nazi spy, Baron Hugo von Detner, his world is thrown into turmoil. Threatening Becker with deportation, Hugo forces him to use his shop as a front for espionage.

Members of a well-to-do small community become worried when it is revealed that one of their maids is writing a telling exposé.

Con woman Ricki Woodner and detective Bob Simms follow a prison-bound swindler Ace Connors on his five-day gourmet binge.

Frenchwoman Michele de la Becque, an opponent of the Nazis in German-occupied Paris, hides a downed American flyer, Pat Talbot, and attempts to get him safely out of the country.

Arthur Simon Simpson is a small-time crook biding his time in Greece. One of his potential victims turns out to be a gentleman thief planning to steal the emerald-encrusted dagger of the Mehmed II from Istanbul's Topkapi Museum.

1920s Greece is occupied by the Turks. A country in turmoil with entire villages uprooted. A small community conduct their annual Passion Play. The leading citizens, under auspices of the Patriarch, choose the actors: a stuttering shepherd as Jesus, the town butcher as Judas, the town prostitute as Mary Magdalene, and so on. As the story unfolds, the Passion becomes a reality.

Filled with humor and defining experiences in both his own life and in the lives of some of his closest friends, William Faulkner and Robert Aldrich, as well as on his late wife, screenwriter Silvia Richards, Mr. Bezzerides offers colorful reflections as to why he and his typewriter unabashedly need to keep creating honest characters, worlds, and stories. Through recently discovered boxes of photographs, film clips, the haunting music by Fugazi, interviews (including Jules Dassin, Mickey Spillane and Barry Gifford) and testaments to his progressive creativity from other writers, Fay Lellios' straight-ahead documentary gives us a start in discovering this 97-year-old proletariat storyteller, and the meaning of his favorite phrase by Carl Jung, "There can be no birth of consciousness without pain."