George Voskovec

In 1972, college theater student Richard Collier (Christopher Reeve) celebrates the success of his first play. During the celebration, he is approached by an elderly woman who places an antique pocket watch into his hand and pleads "Come back to me." Richard does not recognize the woman, who returns to her own residence afterward. Eight years later, Richard is a successful playwright living in Chicago, but has recently broken up with his girlfriend and is struggling with writer's block. Feeling stressed from writing his play, he decides to take a break and travels out of town to the Grand Hotel. While looking at a display in the hotel's museum, Richard becomes entranced by a strangely captivating photograph of a mysterious, beautiful young woman. With the help of Arthur Biehl (Bill Irwin), an old man who has been at the hotel since 1910, Richard discovers that she is Elise McKenna (Jane Seymour), a famous early 20th-century stage actress. Upon digging deeper, he learns that she was the aged woman who gave him the pocket watch eight years earlier, but died afterward later that same evening. Richard visits Laura Roberts (Teresa Wright), Elise's former housekeeper and companion. While there, he discovers a music box that plays the 18th variation on Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini by Rachmaninoff, his favorite musical piece. Among Elise's personal effects is a book on time travel written by an old college professor, Dr. Gerard Finney (George Voskovec). Richard becomes obsessed with traveling back to 1912 and meeting Elise, who he has fallen in love. He seeks out Professor Finney, who believes that he briefly traveled through time through the power of self-hypnosis. To accomplish this process, one must remove all things from sight that are related to the current time. Finney warns Richard that such a process would leave one very weak physically, possibly dangerously so. Back in his hotel room, Richard dresses himself in an early 20th-century suit, and attempts to will himself into 1912 using tape-recorded suggestions. The attempt fails because he lacks real conviction, but after finding an old guest book from 1912 containing his signature, Richard realizes that he will eventually succeed. Richard again hypnotizes himself (without the benefit of a modern tape recorder) and allows his absolute faith in his eventual success to become the tipping point or trigger for the journey back through time. He slowly falls asleep and awakens to the sound of whinnying horses in the year 1912. Richard looks all over the hotel for Elise, even meeting Arthur Biehl as a little boy, but has no luck finding Elise. Finally, he stumbles upon Elise walking by a tree near the lake. She seems to swoon slightly when seeing him, but then suddenly asks upon meeting him "Is it you?" McKenna's overbearing manager, William Fawcett Robinson (Christopher Plummer), abruptly intervenes and sends Richard away. Richard stubbornly continues to pursue Elise until she agrees to accompany him on a stroll through the surrounding idyllic landscape. Richard ultimately asks why Elise wondered aloud "Is it you?" and she replies that Robinson somehow knows that she will meet a man who will change her life forever, and that she should be afraid. Richard then shows Elise the same pocket watch which she will eventually give him 60 years in the future. Upon returning to the hotel, Elisa invites Richard to her play. He attends the comical-farce and she, in an almost trance-like state, recites an impromptu monologue dedicated to him. During intermission, he finds her posing formally for a photograph. Upon spotting Richard, Elise breaks into a radiant smile and veritably glows with soft affection. Just then, the camera's flash goes off and forever captures that wonderous moment in time. We now know that this picture is the same one that Richard will see 68 years later on a wall near the lobby at the Grand Hotel. He later receives a letter from Robinson asking to meet him immediately and saying that it is a matter of life and death. Robinson wants Richard to leave Elise, saying it is for her own good. Richard thinks Robinson is in love with Elise, but Robinson states that he is obsessed with her being a star and has no romantic interest in her. When Richard professes his love for her, Robinson has him bound and locked inside the stables. Robinson then informs Elise that Richard has left her and isn't the one, though she doesn't believe him and professes her love for Richard. Richard wakes up the next morning and escapes his constraints. He discovers that the acting troupe has already left for Denver, though Elise has returned to the hotel to find him. Richard then goes out to the hotel's capricious deck and begins giving into despair, but presently perceives Elise calling his name and running towards him. They return to his room together and it is there that Elise becomes truly intimate with a man for the very first time in her life. Later that evening, she asks Richard to marry him and he readily accepts. She then informs him that the first thing she will do for him is to buy him a new suit (the suit Richard has been wearing the entire time in 1912 is about 10 to 15 years out of style). Richard begins to show his true love how wonderful the suit is on account of its many pockets. He is alarmed when he reaches into one and finds a shiny modern Lincoln penny with the mint date of 1979. This modern item breaks his hypnotic suggestion, and Richard feels himself rushing backwards from 1912 as though through a tunnel, and Elise screams his name in horror as he is pulled inexorably back to the present. Richard wakes up in the same room he just left, although now it is 68 years later. He is very weak and physically and emotionally exhausted from his trip through time and from the devastating unexpected return. He scrambles desperately back to his own suite and attempts to hypnotize himself again, without success. After wandering around the hotel property and sitting interminably at the places where he spent time with Elise, Richard eventually retires to his room and remains there unmoving for days until discovered by Arthur and the hotel manager; they send for a doctor and paramedics. Richard suddenly smiles and sees himself drifting above his body and is drawn to a light shining through the nearby window, where he is reunited forever with Elise.

A small-town police chief investigating a murder is offered help by a self-described psychic. However, when the chief discovers that the "psychic" is in possession of information known only to the police, he suspects that the man may be more involved in the case than he lets on. —Anonymous

In West Berlin in the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War, Alec Leamas is a spy in charge of British Intelligence operations in the city. However, his operatives have been hunted down and killed by Mundt, the head of East German counter-espionage. Leamas himself is present at Checkpoint Charlie near the Berlin Wall when he witnesses the last of his agents, Karl Riemeck, being killed as he attempts to escape to the West. Leamas is recalled to London by Control, the head of the "Circus" (slang for MI6, the British Intelligence service). Control makes little secret of the fact that he sees Leamas' career as over, however he is willing to keep him on for one last operation: to destroy Mundt, something which Leamas is only too happy to do. Leamas is later seen apparently out of the service and unemployed. He gets a job at a reference library and starts an affair with Nan Perry, another librarian and a member of the British communist party. Leamas gives the impression of a bitter, broken man and an alcoholic. He later assaults a grocer and spends time in prison. After his release from jail, Leamas is approached by a man called Ashe who claims to be part of a charity that supports ex-convicts. Leamas is quick to realise that Ashe and his associate Carlton are East German agents who want him to defect and provide information. Still a heavy drinker and desperate for money, he agrees. Leamas later visits George Smiley, another leading official in the "Circus", and there he meets Control who briefs him on what he is to tell the Germans. Leamas' defection is part of a long-term plan hatched by the British that will lead the East Germans to believe that Mundt is a traitor and will be executed by his own side. Travelling on a false passport, Leamas goes to Holland where he meets Peters, an East German Intelligence official. Leamas tells Peters about what he knows about the "Circus" and specifically about Operation "Rolling Stone" during which he made payments into Danish and Finnish banks under a false name. The money was later taken out by a "business partner", actually an agent working behind the Iron Curtain. Leamas later reads a newspaper article which shows that he is wanted by the police in England. He has no choice now but to agree to actually go to East Germany itself and is taken there by Peters. Leamas arrives at a compound where he meets Fiedler, Mundt's deputy in counter-espionage. It's well known that there is little love lost between Mundt, an ex-Nazi, and Fiedler, who is a Jew. Fiedler questions Leamas further about "Rolling Stone" and suggests that it was all about secret payments to a spy even higher up in the East German government than Karl Riemeck, who worked for the Presidium of the East German Communist Party. Leamas himself rejects this theory on the grounds that, as head of British Intelligence operations in Germany, he would have been told about all the agents working there. Meanwhile in London, Leamas' girlfriend Nan Perry is visited by George Smiley who claims to be a friend of Leamas. She is later invited to East Germany as part of an exchange program between the British and East German Communist Parties. One night, Fiedler and Leamas return to the compound where they are arrested by Mundt himself. However, Fiedler has already reported his own findings to the Presidium and Mundt is himself later arrested as a spy for the British. A secret tribunal is convened to determine Mundt's guilt. At the hearing, Fiedler outlines his case: in 1959, Mundt was part of a trading mission in London, a cover for intelligence work. He killed a man and escaped under the noses of the authorities. Fiedler claims that his escape was too easy and that he only got away when he agreed to supply information to the British, for which he was paid. Fiedler also points out that Karl Riemeck, a proven spy, rose high in the East German civil service thanks to Mundt, thus enabling them to gain access to secrets. When Riemeck came under suspicion, Mundt had him killed to protect himself. Another point is that the money from the bank accounts set up by Leamas in Helsinki and Copenhagen was withdrawn at times when Mundt is known to have been in those cities. When Leamas is asked to give evidence he again rejects the idea that Mundt was a spy for Britain because he - Leamas - would have been told. In answer to Mundt's lawyer, he denies ever meeting George Smiley. Mundt's lawyer, Karden, claims Leamas was set up by his boss, Control, to defect in order to frame Mundt and get him executed. He further reveals that Mundt's agents actually followed Leamas during his last days in London and that, although he gave them the slip, it was in the neighbourhood of George Smiley's residence. Leamas' girlfriend, Nan Perry, then appears in the court, having been lured to East Germany. Without knowing exactly what is going on, she is quizzed over her involvement. It's revealed that she now owns the lease on her rented flat due to an anonymous benefactor and that she was visited there by George Smiley. Karden persuades the court that Leamas did meet Smiley before he left London and set in motion a plan to discredit Mundt. In an attempt to try and get Nan out of trouble, Leamas quickly steps forward and admits that Karden is right about the British plan. Mundt is cleared and Fiedler and Leamas are arrested. Although Leamas hoped to get her released, Nan is also taken into custody. Leamas is taken back to his cell, but later hears the door being unlocked. Making his way out of the building to a back exit he meets Mundt. Nan is also there waiting next to a car. Mundt gives Leamas instructions on how to get to East Berlin and meet a contact who will get him over the Wall. His escape will give Mundt extra excuses to purge Fiedler and his associates and have them executed. During the journey by car, Leamas tells a confused Nan what's really been going on, the truth that he himself has only just realised: Mundt is a spy for the British and Fiedler was closing in on him. Rather than just have Fiedler killed, Smiley and Control decided to discredit him and his evidence as well. Leamas was used to make Fiedler's case and Nan to undermine it. Thus Fiedler will die for trying to incriminate a senior intelligence officer and Mundt will be able to resume his work as a double agent. When Nan berates him for causing the execution of Fiedler who was guilty of nothing, Leamas tells her that London needs Mundt in order to protect the West and the freedoms people like her take for granted: "What the hell do you think spies are? Moral philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not. They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me. Little men, drunkards, queers, hen-pecked husbands, civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten little lives. Do you think they sit like monks in a cell, balancing right against wrong? Yesterday I would've killed Mundt because I thought him evil and an enemy, but not today. Today he's evil and my friend. London needs him. They need him so that the great moronic masses you admire so much can sleep soundly in their flea-bitten beds again. They need him for the safety of ordinary crummy people like you and me." He also points out that her own Communist beliefs have their own share of evils: "There's a few million bodies on that path." In East Berlin, Leamas and Nan meet a contact who directs them to a section of the Wall over which they can escape to the West. But as they climb over it, the contact takes aim with a rifle and kills Nan, who now knows too much about Mundt to be kept alive. A shocked Leamas sees Nan collapse to the bottom of the Wall on the Eastern side. At that moment, Smiley himself calls from the Western side for Leamas to hurry and get over the Wall. Leamas instead climbs back down to the East German side and goes to Nan's lifeless body where he himself is shot dead.

Nightclub singer and her brother-in-law try to find her husband's killer. When Steve Emery arrives in Trinidad at the urgent request of his brother, he is stunned to find that his brother has not only been murdered, but that his brother's wife Chris is succumbing to the seduction attempts of the man who quite possibly is the murderer. His feelings are further exacerbated when he discovers that he, too, is becoming strongly attracted to Chris, who is a steamy cabaret singer. She, in turn, is playing off one against the other while betraying the secrets of both men to the police, for whom she is secretly working. —Alfred Jingle and Albert Sanchez Moreno In Port of Spain, Trinidad, the mediocre painter Neal Emery is found dead apparently after committing suicide. Inspector Smythe seeks out Neal's wife, the dancer Chris Emery that is the lead attraction of the Caribe night-club to tell her about the death of her husband. Soon Smythe finds that Neal actually was murdered and his prime suspect is Neal's friend, the wealthy Max Fabian and has eyes on Chris. Smythe asks Chris to spy Fabian to find an evidence to arrest him. Meanwhile Neal's brother Steve Emery unexpectedly arrives in Trinidad to visit his brother and learns that his brother had committed suicide, but he does not believe on the official statement. He stays at Chris house and decides to investigate the murder of his brother. Soon Chris and Steve fall in love with each other, but Chris cannot tell to him the reason why she continues to meet Fabian. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil