Young sailor Edmond Dantès is wrongfully imprisoned, escapes, finds treasure, and reinvents himself as the wealthy Count of Monte Cristo to exact revenge on those who betrayed him.
Eight very different couples deal with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London.
A German submarine hunts allied ships during the Second World War, but it soon becomes the hunted. The crew tries to survive below the surface, while stretching both the boat and themselves to their limits.
When a woman's father goes missing, she enlists a local to aid in her search. The pair soon discover that her father has died at the hands of a wealthy sportsman who hunts homeless men as a form of recreation.
A small-time thief steals a car and impulsively murders a motorcycle policeman. Wanted by the authorities, he attempts to persuade a girl to run away to Italy with him.
Young Viscount Tony Pym wangles National Service leave on the pretext of standing as a Tory candidate for a local seat held by his family for generations.
A film director, in bad standing with his studio, tries to turn a local carnival dancer into a "French" movie star and pass her off as his big new discovery.
A study of an amoral and sleazy defense lawyer who suddenly tries to "go straight" when he finds out that his tart wife is cheating on him; as well as the similarities he has in life with one of his clients.
The fox and crow are sharing grapes while the crow reads a book about a similar fox and crow sharing grapes who eventually fought it out for the last one.
A bizarre mechanic tells a traveler the story of a bank employee, Peppino Biancaneve, who with the help of a disc is trying to put together the words he would like to use to ask for the hand of the daughter of the jeweler Carlo Casertoni, but while he mulls over the sentences he should pronounce to his future father-in-law he comes across a strange individual who could be a bringer of bad luck: a jettatore.