At the peak of her international career, Maria Enders is asked to perform in a revival of the play that made her famous twenty years ago. But back then she played the role of Sigrid, an alluring young girl who disarms and eventually drives her boss Helena to suicide. Now she is being asked to step into the other role, that of the older Helena. She departs with her assistant to rehearse in Sils Maria; a remote region of the Alps. A young Hollywood starlet with a penchant for scandal is to take find out more...

The first of Visconti's series of films exploring the mechanisms of class and family in the context of historical change. Set during the 1860s Austrian occupation of Italy, Alida Valli plays Countess Lidia, a married Venetian aristocrat who falls in love with a young Austrian officer, Franz. Lidia sacrifices everything for love, but the narcissistic materialism of Franz becomes apparent, sadistically exploiting his own looks and her masochism, submitting her to one humiliation after another and, find out more...

It's the off-season at the lonely Beauregard Hotel in Bournemoth, and only the long-term tenants are still in residence. Life is stirred up, however, when the beautiful Ann Shankland arrives to see her alcoholic ex-husband, John Malcolm, who is secretly engaged to Pat Cooper, the woman who runs the hotel. Meanwhile, snobbish Mrs Railton-Bell discovers that the kindly if rather doddering Major Pollock, played by David Niven, who won an Oscar for his performance, a retired officer who likes to find out more...