Plot
Sally Maitland (Anna Neagle) boards a ship bound from Britain for Canada during World War II. Two of the passengers, Jim Garrick (Richard Greene) and Polish officer Jan Orlock (Albert Lieven), seek her acquaintance despite her long-time, and well-known admiration for Nazi Germany. It soon becomes common knowledge that Jim is in British intelligence. Sally rebuffs his advances, but welcomes Jan's attention.
The ship is stopped in mid-ocean by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and a boarding party takes Jim prisoner. To the puzzlement of the ship's captain, the cruiser allows the ship to continue on its way. It also turns out that the Germans have captured an imposter, when Jim emerges from hiding.
When they reach the port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Jan introduces Sally to his mother, Madame Orlock (Lucie Mannheim), an invalid. The two women disagree over their opinions of the Nazis. Later, when Sally tries to break off their relationship, Jan reveals that he is working for the Nazis.
Orlock recruits her into his spy ring on the night of the their greatest exploit. To Sally's surprise, the leader of the ring turns out to be Madame Orlock, who is not actually Jan's mother. She reveals that one of the ships of an incoming convoy has been secretly replaced by another, filled with explosives, which is to be detonated when the convoy reaches Halifax. It is planned that the resulting explosion will wreck the vital port, a plan inspired by the devastating accident of the First World War.
Orlock orders Sally to telephone Jim and tell him that an attempt will be made to sabotage the Queen Mary, scheduled to sail later that night, and that all available agents should be immediately sent to stop it. Sally shows her true colours when she divulges the actual plot to the British over the telephone. Canadian bombers are then dispatched to blow up the ship. Meanwhile, Jan shoots Sally before Jim can rescue her; fortunately the bullet is stopped by a cigarette case which he gave to her earlier, and she and Jim are married.
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Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)
“After I discovered the real life of mothers bore little resemblance to the plot outlined in most of the books and articles I’d read, I started relying on the expert advice of other mothers—especially those with sons a few years older than mine. This great body of knowledge is essentially an oral history, because anyone engaged in motherhood on a daily basis has no time to write an advice book about it.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)