A man who spent his formative years in prison for murder is released, and struggles to adjust to the outside world and escape his lurid past. He gets involved with a cheap dancehall girl, and when her protector is accidentally killed, they go on the lam together, getting jobs as farm labourers. But some fellow workers get wise to them.

American conductor John Meredith and his manager, Hank Higgins, go to Russia shortly before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Meredith falls in love with beautiful Soviet pianist Nadya Stepanova while they travel throughout the country on a 40-city tour. Along the way, they see happy, healthy, smiling, free Soviet citizens, blissfully living the Communist dream. This bliss is destroyed by the German invasion.

A psychiatrist specializing in the occult becomes involved in the case of a man who is possessed by a spirit in an antique mirror. The man's fiance discovers that the mirror is able to bring back her former boyfriend, who had been killed in a car accident, from the dead.

After completing his voyages Sindbad the Sailor and his hearty crew have come home to find a palace coup d'etat has occurred and his home city is being run by a brutal dictator played by Pedro Armendariz. He's got designs on the beautiful young princess, Heidi Bruhl both lustful and political.

War correspondent Ernie Pyle joins Company C, 18th Infantry as this American army unit fights its way across North Africa in World War II. He comes to know the soldiers and finds much human interest material for his readers back in the States. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with The Film Foundation in 2000.