Two orphans, Polly and Doug, live with their stepmother Lynne; Polly collapses with the same mystery symptoms that killed her father. The kids’ visiting uncle, Whitney Cameron, is warned that the symptoms match strychnine poisoning, but that poisoners are seldom detected and rarely convicted. Sure enough, no case can be made against the obvious suspect; so what can Whitney do to save the next victim?
Albrecht, Octavia & Äls form a triangle from families of idle intellectuals, prone to Neitsche. Nature loving Äls is gravely ill. Further tragedy looms as Albrecht contracts typhoid bringing Äls’ foster child out of an infected area.
Jacques is an artist whose world changes when he meets Marthe, a woman intent on taking her own life. After he stops her from doing a swan dive into the Seine River, the two start regularly meeting, and Jacques learns that Marthe almost killed herself over a broken heart. As Jacques and Marthe wander through Paris over a series of nights, he begins to fall in love with her — only to find that her former lover is not entirely out of the picture.
In 1958, a Japanese expedition to Antarctica led by meteorologist Kenjiro Ochi and doctor Akira Ushioda leave their exploration base, abandoning their loyal team of sled dogs. When the scientists who are supposed to replace them have their mission canceled, Akira and Kenjiro are worried their dogs will die. A year later, the scientists embark upon a dangerous expedition to rescue their faithful animal companions.
In this French romantic drama, Stephane wants to form a romantic bond with Sabine , and to do this has left his pregnant girlfriend behind. Sabine would rather be with Bruno her former boyfriend, a stage actor. Bruno in turn is much more interested in his current girlfriend. Each person is, in his or her own way, attempting to deal with issues of maturity and responsibility and repeatedly fails to find happiness or even a decently tranquil compromise between their desires and the realities of their situations.
A story set in the beginning of the XIX century about a doomed love between to people from different worlds and its impact in their lives.
Two narrators, one seen and one unseen, discuss possible connections between a series of paintings. The on-screen narrator walks through three-dimensional reproductions of each painting, featuring real people, sometimes moving, in an effort to explain the series’ significance.
Oliveira returned to the center of Portugal’s film scene in the 1960s with Acto da Primavera, a work that marks a significant change in the director’s trajectory and that initiates some of the cinematic strategies that he would develop more fully in later films. In Acto da Primavera, Oliveira offers a version of a popular representation of the Passion of Christ, enacted by members of a rural community in northern Portugal, derived from the Auto da Paixão de Jesus Cristo (1559), by Francisco Vaz de Guimarães.
