Twenty-year-old Joseph and his sixteen-year-old sister Suzanne live in the merciless conditions of an intemperate foreign land with their widowed mother.
An English nurse and an American soldier on the Italian front during World War I fall in love, but the horrors surrounding them test their romance to the limit.
Phaedra is a poor sponge diver on the lovely Greek isle of Hydra. While diving, she discovers an ancient brass and gold statue of a boy riding a dolphin, which is said to have the magical power to grant wishes.
Fed up with her wealthy but abusive husband, Tom (Basil Dignam), young English homemaker Laura Wilton (Anne Heywood) conspires with her lover, American Army captain Dave Dillon (Robert Arden), to have her boozy spouse meet an "accidental" demise.