Ellen McNulty leaves her New Jersey hamburger stand and heads west to pay a surprise visit to her son and his new bride. When Ellen arrives, her daughter-in-law mistakes her for the maid she has hired for a big party they are throwing. Rather than cause any embarrassment, Ellen goes along with the charade, which leads to many complications.
Lena, a woman in her late twenties, loves her boyfriend, but in time comes to see that their relationship serves no useful function. What's more, she sees that her friends are for the most part empty-headed lackeys, causing her to wonder just what is the point of her life.
When the father of privileged Rosina da Silva violently dies, she decides to pass herself off as a gentile and finds employment with a family in faraway Scotland. Soon she and the family father, Charles, start a passionate secret affair.
Ying Ke-Feng, head of Peerless Manor, is an expert swordsman whose escort business transports 200,000 taels of silver to the capital each year. This year, however, he is afflicted with an infirmity that renders him unable to use his sword.
On a ranch in Wyoming, one of the cowboys, Cheyenne Harry (Harry Carey), falls in love with his boss's daughter. But she decides to elope to the city with Captain Thornton, a wealthy visitor to the ranch. She quickly discovers that life in the city is not what she expected. Cheyenne, devastated by the loss of his fiancée, decides to go to the city to find her, and in the end rescues her from the grips of Captain Thornton and from the extravagant and decadent way of life in the city.
Ahmed, son of Diana and Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan, falls in love with Yasmin, a dancing girl who fronts her father's gang of mountebanks. She and Ahmed meet secretly until one night when her father and the gang capture the son of the sheik, torture him, and hold him for ransom.
Venky and Nandini's relationship changes from mere friendship to something that is more romantic. However, love only blossoms between the two after Nandini's marriage is fixed elsewhere.
Rei is a freelance writer embattled by personal demons. She hears voices in her head, and has sleeping problems, eating disorders and drinks excessively. On Valentine's Day, she meets truck driver Takatoshi. She joins him on a journey in his bumpy and shaky truck - which vibrates in tune with her uneasy soul.
Tsar Alexandre II meets a young student, Katia. He understands that he loves her and try to send her away but they end up seeing each other again and becomes his mistress. With the help of Katia, Alexandre prepares a liberal constitution, but these reforms make him hostile to the more privileged subjects without satirising the revolutionaries against the regime.
Absent-minded yet cultured, Pierre answers his parents demands to wed by ignoring both astronomy and the housemaid, instead falling head-over-heels for rich damsels.
A young Venezuelan idealist flees his native land to escape a revolution. Hoping to find peace, he goes to the mountains and the forests of the Amazon. There he encounters Rima, the Bird Girl, an orphan living a life of nature, who is feared by a local jungle tribe.
Irène is a beautiful girl working in Paris, she soon meets a manager and hopes a love story with him. But he tells a lie, so she falls in love with a house painter.
Pierre Cousin, a depressive compositor, wants to die. After five vain attempts at committing suicide, he decides to hire professional hit men to do the job on him. But as he's waiting for death, he accidentally saves a suicidal young woman's life... and falls in love. Having suddenly found a reason to live, he now fears the killers he himself hired. Is there still time to call off his contract?
Widowers Amos and Ben plot to romantically unite Amos' daughter Luiss and Ben's son Matt by pretending to feud and forbidding the teens to associate, knowing they will resist their fathers' interference. As the two youngsters fall in love, the fathers plot to end the 'feud' by hiring a traveling showman to fake an abduction and allow Matt to 'rescue' Luisa.