An actress of political torture movies made by her husband has to finish his latest film and arrange a screening for distributors while the husband, who is also secretly an anarchist revolutionary, is away for some resistance operation.
Klaus Kinski plays the role of a drifter on a motorcycle who happens to be passing through town immediately after a young school girl has been run over and killed by an unknown person on a motorcycle. The parents of the girl conspire to get rid of Kinski with the help of some of the locals including the town bully who recently had a run-in with Kinski in a pub over a woman. Kinski's only ally is the woman whose honor he tried to defend. Trapped in the town due to sabotage on his bike and a number of other incidents, Kinski soon realizes he is in real trouble.
In Grenoble, a prostitute is murdered in her hospital bed. Cora twenty-two and also a prostitute was one of her friends. On a daily basis these women suffer violence receive a miserable salary and work non-stop in terror of the pimps.
Young - beautiful - married, fulfilled, Martha is bored. Passive in an active society, she took a first step by serving as a "guinea pig" to her brother researcher who undertook a comparative study on animal behavior and human behavior.
François, a Jewish lad, works for an insurance company and is engaged to a Jewish girl. His world is very ordered and secure and perhaps feels a bit claustrophobic. When he observes that a murderer has been declared psychologically incompetent and is to be placed in a mental institution, probably for the rest of his life, François feels the murder's plight very keenly. As time goes by, the murderer's situation is more and more unbearable to him, and he breaks off his engagement. Afterward, he has a liaison with a girl he has not known before, an act that somehow frees him. Now he wants to free the murderer somehow.
Tony and Nanar, two teenagers who met in reform school, are part of a gang of idle, penniless youngsters from the Paris suburbs. Together, they go to dances and plan mischief. The muse of the gang, B.B. La Brune, organizes leisure activities when she's not up to no good. Unemployed and penniless, they all dream of consumption and possession. Until the day a fight turns ugly: Tony, trying to reason with Nanar, pulls the trigger.
