故事发生在印地安娜州的伯里斯郊,唐(弗雷德里克·马奇 Fredric March 饰)和妻子艾琳娜(玛莎·斯考特 Martha Scott 饰)幸福的生活在这里,共同抚养着女儿辛迪(玛丽·墨菲 Mary Murphy 饰)和儿子拉斐尔(理查德·艾尔 Richard Eyer 饰)。一天,当艾琳娜送丈夫和孩子出门之后,以格林(亨弗莱·鲍嘉 Humphrey Bogart 饰)和他弟弟霍尔(杜威·马丁 Dewey Martin 饰)为首的一帮越狱犯闯进了家中。 之后,格林又如同请君入瓮一般的控制了家中的另外三人,他们的要求很简单,就是等待格林的情妇来给他们送钱。实际上,警方已经在追捕这批逃犯了,但他们并不知道这些犯罪分子们其实近在眼前。
Though Delluc's career was short-lived, it burst vigorously(7 films in 4 years)that it forever left its imprint on french cinema history, and they rightly honoured him by giving the annual Prix Delluc to the best French film of the year. He was responsible for the creation of influential cinema journals like Le Journal du Ciné-Club and Cinéa, founding numerous film societies, writing countless articles and coining the term cineaste. Delluc believed that films should be set in the natural without elaborate posturing, and characters should be portrayed in an intimate way where the past and present, illusion and reality can be correlated, all considered to be avant-garde at its time. He died only a few weeks after the shooting of The Flood at the age of 33.