Before Dawn charts the years of exile in the life of famous Jewish Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, his inner struggle for the "right attitude" towards the events in war torn Europe and his search for a new home.

A writer encounters the owner of an aging high-class hotel, who tells him of his early years serving as a lobby boy in the hotel's glorious years under an exceptional concierge.

A romantic drama set in Germany just before WWI and centered on a married woman who falls in love with her husband's protégé. Separated first by duties and then by the war, they pledge their devotion to one another.

A queen who lost three kingdoms. A wife who lost three husbands. A woman who lost her head.

A story about art and educated men, and how their art and culture reveal themselves useless in the face of the harsh realities of the 20th century life.

All hell breaks loose when an eccentric theatrical ensemble arrives in Oviedo, Spain to stage a production of the Leopoldo Alas play -La Regenta.

Peking, 1948. A winter night. A man returns home to find a letter awaiting him written by a woman before her death. in the letter she tells him the story of her love for him -a life-long passion that has not diminished over time, but one that he has never known. her story spans 18 years from the moment she -then a 13 year-old girl- sets her eyes on her new neighbor. she tells their brief but passionate love in her youthi the hardship she goes through raising their child alone, and their final encounter after the war, during which the man fails tor ecognize her and one which leaves her in despair. Now having lost her son, she no longer has the courage to live on. Only in a letter is she capable of telling him everything, for the first and the last time. shaken by the letter, the man searches his memory for the nameless woman.

The life of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig in Brazil. He wrote the famous book "Brasil, País do Futuro" (Brazil, Country of the Future). He and his wife Lotte, in a mysterious death pact, decided to kill themselves in the week following 1942 Carnival, in Brazil.

Set in 1913, 1936 and 2001. When he returns to the casino and seaside resort of his early teens, Louis, a 78 year old man encounters Olivia, a 19 year old young woman madly in love with a violent cad. Louis tells the story of his own mother having a passionate, driven fling with his Italian tennis instructor in 1936, and of Marie Collins Brown, the slightly older widowed woman who helped him through his confusion and pain by recounting the story of her passionate 24 hour fling with a hopeless young Polish gambler in 1913.

A famous author receives a letter from a stranger who reveals how, without he ever known anything, she dedicated her life to and burned her love for him.

The story of Marquise De Prie, the wife of Marquis De Savoy and the mistress of King Louis XV.

Edgar M. and his mother come abroad a small ship to Eden Sanatorium spa. It is here that the wife, wronged by her husband, will seek a cure for her bad headache, while the 13-year-old Edgar M. is fighting his first male impulses as well as 'enoresis nocturna', the prettier word for wetting one's bed. The boy's amazed gaze hungrily devours the diverse hotel guests, their love joys and sorrows, while passion lustfully penetrates the walls, carried by the voice of the enchanting opera singer.

Whenever people are released from their society's constraints, there is the possibility that they will behave badly, at least according to the rules of the society they have left behind. This seems to have been particularly the case for Europeans living in colonial establishments in Africa and Asia. In this drama, based on a story by Stefan Zweig, Dr. Steiner (Andrzej Seweryn) was caught with his fingers in the till at a German hospital. Rather than prosecute him, they gave him the option of emigrating elsewhere. He chose to serve at a clinic in a remote part of Portuguese Goa. He has been on his best behavior for years, but when the beautiful wife (Fanny Ardant) of a diplomat comes to him asking for an abortion, he is tempted to ask for sexual favors in return, and his life swiftly goes out of control.

While recuperating in a sanatorium in the mountains, a young boy becomes very close friends with an older baron. But the baron is only using the boy to get to know his mother, the wife of an older diplomat. When the boy realises the baron’s intentions, he becomes jealous, moody and depressed.

It is the story of a middle age professor who falls deaply in love with a young student in his English literature class. The student is a boarder in the teacher's house. The teacher is married and his wife knows he is mostly attracted to young men. She loves him nevertheless. The whole story revolves around a book the professor will write, dictating to his young pupil... he will only declare his love at the end of the writing ...and, it is too late.

Alice, a widowed Frenchwoman, goes on a vacation to Italy. Upon her return, she relates the particulars of her holiday. Within a 24-hour time frame, Alice gets on the wrong boat, winds up in Switzerland where she whiles away the hours at a casino, meets a handsome young German army deserter named Thomas, spends the night with her new acquaintance, pays his sizeable gambling debts, and helps him elude the authorities...

The fall and pillaging of the once ancient Greek and later Roman city of Byzantium (also known as Constantinople and later Istanbul) by the Ottoman Empire in 1453.

Werner von Basil (a Austrian intellectual) was captured by the Nazi in 1938. The want to break him to confess smuggling. Without any mental sustenance, the only thing left to keep his mind busy is an old tactics book for chess.

Irene Wagner, the wife of prominent scientist Albert Wagner, finds herself blackmailed about her affair by her lover's jealous ex-girlfriend. The plot, an experiment in causing fear, drives her into a rage.

A writer tells a crowd in a café about a woman he knows, who once feel deeply in love with a desperate, compulsive gambler.

A pianist about to flee from a duel receives a letter from a woman he cannot remember, who may hold the key to his downfall.

A paraplegic mistakes a man's pity for love.

A European doctor, in self-imposed exile in some place like Borneo, obsesses crazily over a ruling-class white woman.

The uncredited adaptation of Stefan Zweig's novel (1922), made five years before Max Ophüls' more widely recognized Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948).

The tragic life of Marie Antoinette, who became queen of France in her late teens.

A lady who had a secret affair lives in fear.

Dr. Holk leads an isolated and lonely existence in a small, Dutch colony in the tropics. Having fled from love and civilization, his only companions now are alcohol and his work, which takes him to villages ravaged by dirt, fever and a strange illness which turns innocent people into madmen: Amok. One day, he is called on by Helene Haviland, who asks him to abort her lover's child before her husband returns from abroad. Even though Holk is enchanted by her seductive beauty, he haughtily refuses her request. Rejected, the woman turns to a Chinese practitioner. When Holk tracks her down in a dirty dive, it's already too late for the two of them.

A one-night fling during World War I results in a young girl getting pregnant. Years later, she meets him again. Now a successful businessman, he doesn't even remember her, but tries to seduce her.

A boy and his mother stay in a hotel near a lake where they meet a fascinating man.

After the tragic death from malaria of her beloved husband his rich widow Helga Vanroh travels restlessly around various Mediterranean countries. In the luxurious surroundings of a hotel in Monte Carlo Mrs. Vanroh keeps apart from society, until one evening she decides to visit the casino. There a young man attracts her curiosity and compassion.

"The Fear of an Unfaithful Woman" - Inge Duhan lives with her husband, the lawyer Erich Duhan, and her little daughter Susi in Berlin. Inge is a very attractive woman. She loves her husband and has always been faithful to him. On a holiday trip to the French Riviera Inge meet the charming painter Francard. A brief affair begins that turns into blackmail.

A drug-addicted doctor has in Africa isolated life. Once a pretty young married woman asks him to make an abortion. He'll agree only if she accepts his sexual offer. Woman refuses and leaves immediately.