Prague, Bohemia, 1820. Balduin, a penniless student, falls in love with Countess Margit, a wealthy noblewoman whom he has saved from drowning.

Lorenz Lubota is a city clerk with no direction in life. One day on his way to work he is run over by a woman driving a chariot and he is immediately infatuated with her.

As a young couple stops and rests in a small village inn, the man is abducted by Death and is sequestered behind a huge doorless, windowless wall. The woman finds a mystic entrance and is met by Death, who tells her three separate stories set in exotic locales, all involving circumstances similar to hers.

A gypsy dancer becomes involved with some smugglers in Spain.

In a futuristic city sharply divided between the rich and the poor, the son of the city's mastermind meets a prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.

In a distant Teutonic village, people dance and drink merrily celebrating a wedding feast. However, an elderly man tells the villagers that the valley where they live wasn't always happy but sorrowful. This was due to the tyranny of the master of the mountains who ruled the valley despotically.

Baruch Mayer, son of an orthodox rabbi from a poor shtetl in Galizia, decides to break with the family tradition and leave the shtetl to become an actor.