Bearing traces of the old Anton Chekhov play The Wedding, The Contract is set during an "arranged" ceremony. The bride and groom barely know each other, but this matters not at all to their tradition-bound families. At the last minute, the bride balks. Only slightly nonplused, the groom's father, a status-seeking doctor, decides to go ahead with the expensive reception anyway. Polish director Krzysz Zanussi uses this scenario to stick it to capitalist corruption, and to society's destruction of the individual spirit. Leslie Caron, the one recognizable member of the cast, is outstanding as a wealthy, over-the-hill ballerina who happens to be a kleptomaniac.

September 13, 1944. On the right bank of the Vistula, a group of young people is getting ready to cross to help the fighting Warsaw. Tadeusz, a young poet with amputated legs meets Katarzyna. Two officers of the Home Army and the AL, Polish and Soviet soldiers come here. A fight ensues with the Nazis trying to get out of the encirclement. Katarzyna is raped by one of them in front of the powerless Tadeusz. . . Two boats are sinking crossing the Vistula. Tadeusz falls into the river with a wheelchair ...

A lonely Piotr Płaksin, who makes a living from part-time jobs, lives his dreams of a trip to the Easter Islands on a self-built yacht. One day a man learns that he has become a father.

A film about the life and activities of the Polish revolutionary Ludwik Waryński. In his memoirs, Ludwik returns to his student years in St. Petersburg, to Warsaw, to Krakow, where he was arrested and put on trial. After the end of the process in Krakow, Waryński leaves for Geneva, where he meets with Russian revolutionaries. In 1881, he returned to his homeland and created the first party of workers in Poland...

In what appears to be an inexplicable incident, a man drives up to a resort hotel in midwinter, throws away his car keys, enters, and proceeds to agitate everyone he meets with his urgency -- a message he is somehow unable to communicate. Then he leaves, disappearing in the snow. Later, the people he appeared to have upset have gathered to search for him and find him frostbitten, but alive. Visiting him at the sanatorium to which he has been taken, they gradually discover what was really happening.

A psychologist is asked about a scientific consultation with a girl who attempted suicide.

A group of students are spending the summer vacation at a university camp studying the science of linguistics. One of the camp directors, Jaroslaw, is a young professor who prefers the straightforward, intimate approach to students. He is opposed in his liberal views by Jakub, who likes to manipulate people. There is a confrontation from the beginning when Jaroslaw allows to attend the seminar a student who presents the views not according to the official line. In the end, a jury prize is given to mediocre paper, while the suspected school of thought still draws a recommendation. Finally the deputy rector arrives for the closing ceremonies, and since he disfavors the line of thought awarded by the recommendation the tensions rise. They climax when student in question bites the rector in the ear while receiving recommendation. The confrontation results in a scandal and the police is called in.

Krzysztof Zanussi's groundbreaking film chronicles a decade in the life of a young physics student whose absolute faith in the primacy of rationality and science is shaken by tragedy and affairs of the heart.

A student who missed his final exam because of illness arrives at his professor's house to beg to be allowed to take it.