[4] Scobie, Deputy Commissioner of the Sierra Leone Police in Freetown during the Second World War, is unhappily married to fellow-Catholic Louise: both mourn the death of their only daughter.

Called up country because a local District Commissioner is in trouble, he finds the man has committed suicide because of his debts.

While he is there, survivors of a ship torpedoed by the Germans are brought ashore by the Vichy police of neighbouring French Guinea.

It contains no original score, but instead features indigenous music from Sierra Leone in West Africa, where location filming took place.

[5] The main difference between the film and the book is in the ending, which is almost equally bleak, but reversed from Greene's original story.

In the book, Scobie's servant is killed (apparently an act of revenge by Yusef, here played by Gérard Oury).