Phoenix office worker Marion Crane is fed up with the way life has treated her. She has to meet her lover Sam in lunch breaks, and they cannot get married because Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony. One Friday, Marion is trusted to bank forty thousand dollars by her employer. Seeing the opportunity to take the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town and heads towards Sam's California store. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into the Bates Motel. The motel is managed by a quiet young man called Norman who seems to be dominated by his mother.
A teenager stands trial for murdering her best friend.
A 15-year-old Krahô boy called by his dead father's voice to celebrate the funerary feast which will allow his father's spirit to depart to the village of the dead. Reluctant to embrace what this implies, a first step in becoming a shaman, he flees to the nearest town, inhabited by white people. Whether Western civilization will offer him any solutions to his problems is, however, another question.
A navy officer commands the Greyhound during World War II.