Trama

A Polish seaman kills a young woman in Wales, then abducts the witness.

Gille Evans (Hayley Mills), a twelve-year-old tomboy and compulsive liar living in a sordid tenement with her aunt, witnesses the murder of an immigrant Polish woman living in an nearby apartment by her former boyfriend, Bronislaus Korchinsky. The young merchant marine becomes distraught when he discovers that she has become the mistress of a married British sports announcer and shoots her with her own gun. Gillie lies about the circumstances in order to keep the gun which she discovers where Korchinsky hid it. She ultimately bonds with him and misleads the police in their investigation.—duke1029@aol.com

12-year-old tomboy, Gillie Evans witnesses the murder committed, but her relationship with the killer thwarts the police in their investigation. .. lives with her aunt in a tenement building in the Tiger Bay neighborhood near the docks in Cardiff, Wales. Precocious Gillie, who always wants to play "guns" with the neighborhood boys, is a habitual liar, she doing so as what she sees as the path of least resistance for whatever the situation at hand in a life she doesn't much like. Bronislav Korchinsky (Horst Buchholz) has always been drawn to the sea, and thus has long known that his calling has been to be a career sailor. While he has been away at sea, he has routinely sent his paychecks to his girlfriend, Anya Haluba (Yvonne Mitchell), off of which she is supposed to live with the ultimate goal of them getting married. Gillie and Korchinsky's paths cross when on his latest shore leave he finds that Anya has moved into the same tenement building as Gillie and her aunt. A shrew of a woman, Anya moved to get away from Korchinsky, whom she does not love, to take up with Barclay, a married boxing announcer, this their clandestine love nest. A criminal incident at the tenement bonds Korchinsky and Gillie on multiple levels, at times adversarial and other times for mutual support in what each is striving for in light of the event. Gillie may ultimately understand the consequences of her lies in the process, especially as Police Superintendent Graham investigates the incident, he whose only goal is to discover the truth against what Korchinsky and Gillie are trying to achieve.—Huggo