Plot
The film chronicles Ambassador Davies' impressions of the Soviet Union, his meetings with Stalin, and his overall opinion of the Soviet Union and its ties with the United States. It is made in faux-documentary style, beginning with Davies meeting with President Franklin D. Roosevelt to discuss his new appointment as United States ambassador to the Soviet Union. It continues to show the Davies' family's trip by boat to Moscow, with stops in Europe.
While in Moscow, the movie alternates between Davies' interpretations of Russian politics and communism and his family's impressions of Russian life. It includes a memorable scene with Mrs. Davies at a Russian department store. The movie gives Davies' perspective on various points in Soviet history. It begins with the real Ambassador Davies stating, while seated in an armchair, “No leaders of a nation have been so misrepresented and misunderstood as those in the Soviet government during those critical years between the two world wars.” The film then cuts to the film Davies and begins its narrative.
Davies is shown witnessing the famous show trials conducted by Stalin in the 1930s (known as the Moscow Trials), which are portrayed as trials of Fifth Columnists working for Germany and Japan.
The voice-overs continue throughout the film, interspersing storyline with Davies' opinions. The basis of the film's narrative focuses on the journey of Davies and his family. First, their physical journey from the United States to the Soviet Union. And, second, their less tangible journey from skeptics of communism and the Soviet Union into converts and enthusiasts. The narrative of the movie and the book are almost identical.
Read more about this topic: Mission To Moscow
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“The westward march has stopped, upon the final plains of the Pacific; and now the plot thickens ... with the change, the pause, the settlement, our people draw into closer groups, stand face to face, to know each other and be known.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
““The plot thickens,” he said, as I entered.”
—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)