A talented violin-playing country boy struggles to get acceptance for his love for music.

It is 1809, and the Austro-Polish War is raging. Returning from a reconnaissance mission, Lieutenant Andrzej Zadora and his squad of lancers stop for a rest in Serock, a small Galician town. They spend the night at the "Pod Gwiazdą" inn, where the innkeeper is the young and beautiful Kasia. A passionate feeling develops between the young people. Soon the soldiers leave, and Prince Józef Poniatowski, commander-in-chief of the army, who is in the area inspecting troops, arrives at the inn...

Poor musician Alojzy Kędziorek is in love with Sagankiewicz's daughter Renata, who is reciprocated, but her family wants to marry her off to the wealthy butcher Baleron. Hipek, Alojzy's friend, sells his song to the theater director. The song becomes a huge hit. Alojzy is mistakenly locked up in a newly opened psychiatric hospital. He manages to escape. He goes to the theater where his song is being sung. He receives thunderous applause and an order for new songs. Renata's family agrees to her marriage to Kędziorek.

The brothers, Zbigniew and Stefan, return from a war expedition to their patrimony.

In West Africa, Polish intelligence sergeant Milczek discovers the bandit Sheikh Abdullah’s desert stronghold but is captured until the sheikh’s wife, Jamila, secretly rescues him and follows him into safety. When Jamila sees Milczek with a European woman and believes he has betrayed her, she returns to warn her husband, prompting the bandits to lay a deadly ambush against the approaching French expedition.

Seven young men gather at a manor in August 1914 to form the nascent First Uhlan Regiment, riding off to war amid budding loves and sudden loss. Fifteen years later, the survivors reunite and confront how the conflict irrevocably altered their lives and relationships.

Commander Korski, head of the Gdynia port, invites his police-commander daughter Marysia from Warsaw in hopes she will become engaged to Lieutenant Kotowicz, who is returning from America.