Set at the end of the XIX-th century. Madame Dulska is the sole and absolute ruler of her house in Cracow. She is ruthless, greedy and oversensitive of the reputation of her family. To protect his son from temptations she overlooks the affair he is having with the maid. Young Dulski first wants to marry the girl, but then yields to his mother demands and turns his interest to a cousin. Everything returns to normal: his father has his habitaul visits to a brothel, his son to a cabaret and Madame Dulska safeguards her reign.
The main hero obsessively wants to become an actor. The would-be actor fails two entrance exams to the state acting school and has a nervous breakdown. Eventually he commits himself to the mental institution where patients are rehabilitated by doing some artwork. He refuses to paint but does some acting. He participates in a play where a lead, playing Oedipus, actually blinds himself. Out of the institution he has dreams of killing his father, but finally seems to be ready to start over again and either act without the state license or take another job.
Growing-up village boy Marcin Debik feels bored of existence in his native place and not interested in realizing his father's ideas for living there for ever and making business there. He dreams of living in a big town, making career there and, above all, having foreign automobile, preferably big one and of American make. His determination strengthens after he had accidentally attended some rich society's party for a while. Having finally decided to take his fate in his own hands, he takes leave of his family, his girl and departs for Lublin, the town where his uncle Lukasz runs own photographic studio.
In 1668 Polish colonel Michael Wolodyjowski, who recently retired to a monastery, is recalled to active duty and takes charge of Poland's eastern frontier defenses against invading Tatar hordes and Ottoman armies.
The 1937 trial of communist journalists, working for the same student magazine in Vilnius, is shown through the tragic life of the paper's young collaborator Julek Szulc.
