The Cup of Fury

A traumatised Rhineland orphan, Marie-Louise, arrives on American soil freighted with guilt-by-association: her foster parents swallowed prussic acid in a Weimar courtroom rather than answer charges of sedition. Ellis Island processes her body but not her ghosts; cat-calls of “Hun” trail her like a sooty comet. In a Hoboken drizzle she collars the patrician ship-builder Davidge—part Ahab, part Saint-Hubert—bargaining sweat for citizenship, rivets for redemption. Daylight clangs against steel while nocturnal shadows conspire: Verrinder, velvet-gloved saboteur, slips her a cabal’s poisoned invitation. The yard becomes a moral crucible—every blow-torch flicker asks whether blood-loyalty or chosen nationhood will finally weld her identity. Sabotage, court-martial, a midnight launch ablaze with magnesium flares—her climactic choice brands the film’s thesis onto the smoke-black sky.