Trimmed photographs taken from different sources such as postcards, newspapers, police registries, and family photo albums, creating a vast art installation, merge Christian Boltanski's everyday life and lost memories.
Sam Moran is a Honolulu charter-boat captain who leads fishing expeditions in the tropical paradise. When his daughter is found murdered at the party of a wealthy young playboy, he seeks the truth about the murder.
Two young boys, play hooky from school in order to explore an ultramodern world's fair. They take in the many marvelous scientific and industrial exhibits, obtain literature, eat food, and generally run amok.
Three identical prints of a single 100 foot fixed-camera take are shown from beginning to end-roll light-flare, with a few feet of blackness preceding/bridging/following the rolls.
"In my film I suggest that there is no greater mystery than that of the protagonists. War and Love are simply equated for what they are; the aftermath is inevitable, and a normal human condition, for which like the ancients one can only have pity and understanding.