Larry Darrell (Murray) is a World War I ambulance driving doughboy returned from Europe. Larry and college pal Gray Maturin (Keach) graduate and volunteer for duty in the killing fields of France during WWI to serve in the ambulance corp. They see the horrors of war first hand and lose their good friend Piedmont (Doyle-Murray) in the fighting. Unable to come to terms with the grim realities of life Larry puts his on hold. Engaged to be wed, he pushes the date and his fiancée Isabel Bradley (Hicks) aside while he goes searching for the meaning of life. Larry travels to post-war Europe during the Great Depression, namely Paris and France, then seeking spiritual fulfillment in the awe-inspiring mountains of Tibet. As Larry is putting the pieces of his life together he has little to return home and goes back to France finding the rest of his world is in chaos.
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Isabel marries Larry's best friend Gray, but is bitter at the way things have worked out. She attempts to undermine any chance for happiness Larry may find with the woman he truly loved, Sophie MacDonald (Russell). He is shocked to find that Sophie is now a wreck. Her son and husband killed in a car accident, Sophie is now a drunken whore working in a Parisian brothel. Larry is not so unforgiving that he will walk away from her when she needs him most. He sticks by her, getting her cleaned up and sober. They are engaged when she falls off the wagon and winds up back at the brothel. When Larry comes to take her home, Larry is beaten and driven off. When he returns to collect her in the morning she has been slain and dumped in the Seine. He is crushed but not defeated, coming home to America, stronger and more philosophical for having endured the difficulties of his life and the lives of those around him.
The review of this Movie prepared by David Fletcher