Paul Muni stands out here as the anonymous young man who walks into a police station and confess to a murder. Adopting a name ("Dyke") from a calendar hung on the wall, he is tried, convicted and sentenced to death. When his fate is published, as well as his photo, in the press a young girl and her mother wonder that he might be their long lost brother/son and set out to try establish the truth. The story is curious - it gives us surprisingly little to go on until the last fifteen minutes when we are treated to a wonderfully poignant denouement with the Oscar nominated Muni and "Mary" (Marguerite Churchill). It's more a film to appreciate because of it's cinematic significance - a very early and well made - if simple - talkie, but as a story it is really rather under-cooked for the most part and the supporting efforts add little to the intrigue.
The story is set at the beginning of the 20th century in Sicily. Salvatore, a very poor farmer, and a widower, decides to emigrate to the US with all his family, including his old mother. Before they embark, they meet Lucy. She is supposed to be a British lady and wants to come back to the States. Lucy, or Luce as Salvatore calls her, for unknown reasons wants to marry someone before to arrive to Ellis Island in New York. Salvatore accepts the proposal. Once they arrive in Ellis Island they spend the quarantine period trying to pass the examinations to be admitted to the States. Tests are not so simple for poor farmers coming from Sicily. Their destiny is in the hands of the custom officers.
A man wanders out of the desert not knowing who he is. His brother finds him, and helps to pull his memory back of the life he led before he walked out on his family and disappeared four years earlier.
A death row inmate turns for spiritual guidance to a local nun in the days leading up to his scheduled execution for the murders of a young couple.
When an arranged marriage brings Ada and her spirited daughter to the wilderness of nineteenth-century New Zealand, she finds herself locked in a battle of wills with both her controlling husband and a rugged frontiersman to whom she develops a forbidden attraction.
A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer.
A beautiful young woman sets her sights on an aging millionaire. She seduces him, and moves into his mansion with him. She soon tires of him, though, and after she gets rid of him, she goes after his son.
After losing their parents in a flood at a young age, two brothers grow up to become a police officer and a lawyer, working with a local newspaper owner to help rid the city of bootlegging gangsters.
A supernatural tale set on death row in a Southern prison, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the cell block's head guard, Paul Edgecomb, recognizes Coffey's miraculous gift, he tries desperately to help stave off the condemned man's execution.
A tormented jazz musician finds himself lost in an enigmatic story involving murder, surveillance, gangsters, doppelgängers, and an impossible transformation inside a prison cell.