During World War II, a recently widowed young woman is recruited to work as a spy in France.
Violette Bushell is the daughter of an English father and a French mother, living in London in the early years of World War II. She meets a handsome young French soldier in the park and takes him back for the family Bastille day celebrations. They fall in love, marry, and have a baby girl when Violette Szabo receives the dreaded telegram informing her of his death in North Africa. Shortly afterwards, Violette is approached to join the S.O.E. (Special Operations Executive). Should she stay and look after her baby or "do her duty"?—Steve Crook <[email protected]>
Violette Bushell (Virginia McKenna) is a young woman whose father is English, and whose mother is French, living in London early in the Second World War. She meets French Army officer Etienne Szabo (Alain Saury), stationed in the city, and they become engaged to be married. They have a daughter, Tania, but Etienne never sees the child, as he is killed fighting in the North African front; Violette Szabo and her daughter move into her parents' home.
Because of her linguistic skills, the widowed Szabo is recruited as a spy by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) for operations in France. On her first mission, she is teamed with Captain Tony Fraser (Paul Scofield), a man she had met earlier socially and liked. She arrives by small plane in France, and shares a train compartment to Rouen with curious German soldiers. The French Resistance group Fraser had set up in Rouen has been betrayed. The job of the new arrivals is to contact any survivors and to blow up a major railway viaduct. One Resistance member who Szabo contacts tells her that another survivor, a garage mechanic (André Maranne), is suspect, but Szabo takes the risk of meeting him anyway. He informs her that only three of 98 group members remain. Nonetheless, she persuades him to try to blow up the viaduct. Szabo is picked up and questioned by the Gestapo. She is released, and meets in Paris with Fraser, who congratulates her: The viaduct was destroyed.
They return to Britain, and Szabo reluctantly agrees to another mission. Once again, she is under Fraser's command, this time in the Limoges region. She sets out with a guide to contact the various Resistance units to coordinate their actions. She and her guide become involved in a firefight with German soldiers. They are outnumbered and they flee. Szabo injures her ankle, and she insists on remaining behind. She runs out of ammunition and is captured.
Though tortured, she defiantly refuses to provide any information. Eventually she is reunited with two fellow women agents she had befriended during their initial training, Lilian Rolfe (Anne Leon) and Denise Bloch (Nicole Stéphane), in a Nazi prison. As Allied forces advance on Paris, the women are placed on a train for Germany. When the train is bombed by Allied aircraft, the women have a chance to attempt to escape, but Szabo instead fetches water for male prisoners. One of them is Fraser. That night, Szabo and Fraser acknowledge their love for each other.The men and women are separated. The three women are taken to a concentration camp, where they are executed.
After the war, Tania and her grandparents go to Buckingham Palace, where King George VI gives the child her mother's posthumous George Cross. Afterwards, they meet Fraser.
