Second Chess Player
The action takes place in a nameless country occupied by the German army at the time of World War II. In a small village there's an asylum. A squad of German soldiers arrives to take the insane people to a "walk in the forest". Just before they are ready to go to forest to kill the insane people, a Gestapo officer arrives and from his conversation with the doctor we can find out that there's an enemy agent hiding himself in the asylum. Officer Windisch must find the agent from 583 people and on his searches he is slowly starting to feel himself crazy too.
Yla
Captain
In a pre-WWII Lithuanian town, occupied with unemployed workers and crooks of various kinds, lives Adam, a naive young man with no job and a lot of dreams. His closest friend is the Captain, an old sea wolf with many tales to tell about Singapore, Hawaii and other equally exotic and sunny places. Inspired by his stories, Adam manages to get a job in an emigration bureau and starts saving for his ticket to leave abroad.
The rise of a Lithuanian collective farm in the post-war years and the struggle against the remnants of the past in people's minds.
The Russian
Helene is based on Helene Wilfur, a novel by Vicki (Grand Hotel) Baum. Madeleine Renaud essays the title role, a young medical student in love with aspiring musician Pierre Regnier (Jean-Lous Barrault). Pierre's father, a noted surgeon, puts pressure on his son to give up music in favor of medicine. Unable to withstand his father's remonstrations, Pierre kills himself, prompting the grieving Madeleine to forget all about romance and dedicate her life to the cause of healing others. Wilfur avoids the usual soap-opera goo by offering realistic performances and credible dialogue (the English-language subtitles were composed by erudite film critic Herman G. Weinberg).
