A Modern Hero

Oskar Matzerath is a very unusual boy. Refusing to leave the womb until promised a tin drum by his mother, Agnes, Oskar is reluctant to enter a world he sees as filled with hypocrisy and injustice, and vows on his third birthday to never grow up. Miraculously, he gets his wish. As the Nazis rise to power in Danzig, Oskar wills himself to remain a child, beating his tin drum incessantly and screaming in protest at the chaos surrounding him.

A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.

When a group of idealistic young men join the German Army during the Great War, they are assigned to the Western Front, where their patriotism is destroyed by the harsh realities of combat.

Two angels, Damiel and Cassiel, glide through the streets of Berlin, observing the bustling population, providing invisible rays of hope to the distressed but never interacting with them. When Damiel falls in love with lonely trapeze artist Marion, the angel longs to experience life in the physical world, and finds - with some words of wisdom from actor Peter Falk - that it might be possible for him to take human form.

An older daughter invents a fiancé so that her father will allow her younger sister to marry. However, the lie comes back to haunt her.

A carnival girl pretends to be Swedish in order to win a movie role.

When Gelsomina, a naïve young woman, is purchased from her impoverished mother by brutish circus strongman Zampanò to be his wife and partner, she loyally endures her husband's coldness and abuse as they travel the Italian countryside performing together. Soon Zampanò must deal with his jealousy and conflicted feelings about Gelsomina when she finds a kindred spirit in Il Matto, the carefree circus fool, and contemplates leaving Zampanò.

A rich American couple, a family of Dutch criminals, a French gay couple, a working class family from Germany and an illegal Moroccan youth and his kid brother, are all in Amsterdam, each with their own story. Different reasons make their paths intertwine, leading to a dramatic climax that changes their lives for ever.

The owner of a failing circus has to cope with the return of her son after he is released from the psychiatric hospital with complete loss of memory.

A vicious crime lord decides that he has had enough and much to the shock of his colleagues decides to give the business to his second in command and retire to Florida after marrying his moll. Unfortunately, he has no idea that she and the man are lovers.

A condemned murderer, in the process of being executed, relives the events that led to his being sentenced to die in the electric chair. Told in flashback, we witness a sleazy dancehall girl (Vivienne Osborne) dupe a high rise riveter (Edward G. Robinson) into marriage so she can live off of him. But when he loses his job and his marbles, she ends up supporting him with money from her side man-and misses no opportunity to rub it in his face that she's now supporting him in his emasculated state. As the animosity grows and things get more and more unbearable, he is eventually driven to desperate measures.