During the prohibition era, Cornelius, a bootlegger, is on the run from the American coastguards. He comes across a silent film actress, Linda, on the set of a movie and falls in love with her.

Melina Mercouri plays Maya, a jet-setting Greek actress who returns to her homeland to undertake the role of Medea. Searching for inspiration and clues as to how a mother could kill the children she loves, Maya discovers Brenda (Ellen Burstyn), a bible-spouting American woman serving time in an Athens prison for that very crime.

In 1920s Soviet Russia, a fallen aristocrat, a priest and a con artist search for a treasure of jewels hidden inside one of twelve dining chairs, lost during the revolution.