Featuring a wealth of extracts from famous and infamous American movies, Scorsese offers a provocative multifaceted portrait of Hollywood film directors as he charts a comprehensive course through the rich history of the American cinema.

Disc 1. Too late for tears: A man just found $60,000 and his wife insists that he keep it rather than turn it in to the cops. Wanting the money for herself, she kills her husband then reports him missing. The man who cheated himself: Ed Cullen, a San Francisco police officer, is in love with socialite Lois Frazer. Ed seems to find himself stuck between a rock and a hard place when Lois decides to kill her husband and Ed's brother is assigned...

An ill-fated young couple are separated when he is put in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

After battling on the streets in cities from coast-to-coast, vigiliante Paul Kersey has moved back to New York. When his beautiful fiancee Olivia is killed and her daughter is kidnapped by a king pin of the underworld, Kersey finds himself back in the war. Kersey's plan to live anonymously is shattered when he learns that his fiancee was the victim of a protection racket run by her ex-husband, Tommy O'Sheay. One by one Kersey hunts down the criminals,...

A Chicago reporter finds himself stuck in a decade-old murder investigation when he follows a newspaper ad offering a cash reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer.

A hitchiker falls in love with a cafe waitress. Together they murder her husband and then their troubles begin.

Two friends strangle a classmate and invite his family and mutual friends to dinner--with the body stuffed inside the trunk for a buffet table. Inspired by the Leopold-Loeb murder. Shot in eight-minute segments and edited together using some rather unconventional methods, Rope takes place almost entirely on a one-room set.

"London's gambling world is the setting for this complex thriller where aspiring writer Jack Manfred, suffering from writer's block, takes a job as a croupier to support his art. Knowing the dangers of the cards, Jack is adamant about remaining a professional outsider, but the temptations of the game inevitably swallow him deeper than he could have ever anticipated."

Dixon Steele is an alcoholic screenwriter who has some success but is now in the midst of a long dry spell. One of his neighbors is Laurel Gray, a would-be actress and a smart cookie. Steele is a bitter, angry man who succeeds in insulting everyone he sees while drinking at noon in his usual hangout. Dix has taken a job adapting a trashy novel for the screen--but he doesn't want to read the book. The celebrity-obsessed coat check girl at his hangout...

Dark passage: Vincent Parry, a man unjustly accused of murdering his wife, escapes from San Quentin and sets out to clear his name, but he needs the help of someone he can trust. He finds both help and love in Irene, a San Francisco artist who is convinced he's innocent. Key Largo: A hurricane swells outside, but that is nothing compared to the storm that rages inside the hotel at Key Largo. There, sadistic mobster Johnny Rocco holes up, holding...