In 1850s Louisiana, the willfulness of a tempestuous Southern belle threatens to destroy all who care for her.

Living in Kentucky prior to the Civil War, Amantha Starr is a privileged young woman. Her widowed father, a wealthy plantation owner, dotes on her and sends her to the best schools. When he dies suddenly Amantha's world is turned upside down. She learns that her father had been living on borrowed money and that her mother was actually a slave and her father's mistress.

The coquettish granddaughter of a respected small-town judge is stranded at a bootleggers’ hide-out, subjected to an act of nightmarish sexual violence, and plunged into a criminal underworld that threatens to swallow her up completely.

Fed up with the sea, Paul, a Swiss mechanic working in the noisy bowels of a merchant ship, lands in Lisbon.

An American Merchant Marine captain, rescued from a Chinese Communist jail by local villagers, is "shanghaied" into transporting the entire village to Hong Kong on an ancient paddle steamer.

After tragedy, a young girl falls for a boy from a powerful political dynasty. But the opposition that's current, and secrets they hold in the past threaten to destroy them and unravel the city of New Orleans.

An aging Southern Belle complicates life for her ambitious son and crippled daughter because of her own warped views of what life should be.

George Raft plays a sailor who sets out to solve his father's mysterious death.

Aibileen Clark is a middle-aged African-American maid who has spent her life raising white children and has recently lost her only son; Minny Jackson is an African-American maid who has often offended her employers despite her family's struggles with money and her desperate need for jobs; and Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan is a young white woman who has recently moved back home after graduating college to find out her childhood maid has mysteriously disappeared. These three stories intertwine to explain how life in Jackson, Mississippi revolves around "the help"; yet they are always kept at a certain distance because of racial lines.

A German living in India during World War II is blackmailed by the English to impersonate an SS officer on board a cargo ship leaving Japan for Germany carrying a large supply of rubber for tyres. His mission is to disable the scuttling charges so the captain cannot sink the ship if they are stopped by English warships.

At the end of the Civil War, Belle Gatlin Barlowe, a widowed mother of three, faces uncertainty as she attempts to defend her family's land by any means necessary. When the corrupt local bank pushes Belle into becoming an outlaw, the stakes become personal, setting off a chain of events that force her to question whether it's better to be lawful or to survive.

A Southern belle's flirtation with a working man leads to tragedy.