On a dark September evening, a doctor loses his young son to diphtheria. Soon afterwards, a landowner arrives and begs the doctor to come see his sick wife.
The young generation is not very at peace with the morality of their parents. In a story set in a Moravian village, the otherwise contented cooperators indulge in stealing from the common property without seeing anything wrong with such actions.
March, 1945: The insecure and hesitant reserve lieutenant Felix Bleck receives orders to lead a transport of 40 prisoners to the Western Front, where the men are to be burned up in a punishment battalion.
When a former artisan is tricked into putting his sister up as collateral for a loan by a gangster boss in a crooked gambling casino it sets in motion the story of Ooka Echizen, the famed magistrate of Edo during the reign of Shogun Tsuneyoshi.
It's a crisp autumn morning. Marta prepares breakfast and goes to work. Little Jenda has a sore throat, so she has to go to her grandfather's to look after the boy.