A documentary following US, Peter Brook's experimental play about the moral issues surrounding the Vietnam War, Benefit of the Doubt is the only known film record of the Royal Shakespeare Company production. It was filmed by Peter Whitehead concurrently with his Tonite Let's All Make Love in London (1967), on the surface a very different film, yet both share a central concern with the war, protest and Britain's political and cultural relationship with America.
In 1870, a Jamaican colonial family sends its children to Britain for proper schooling, but their ship is taken over by pirates, who become fond of the kids.
The headmaster of a stuffy British boys' school receives a surprise visit from the now-grown, and very voluptuous, daughter he fathered years earlier in the Pacific islands.
After he is orphaned by an air raid on Port Said during the Suez Crisis, a young boy attempts to go by himself from the Suez Canal to Durban in South Africa where his nearest relative, Aunt Jane, lives. On the way he meets a variety of different people who help or hinder his journey - including an ageing diamond smuggler.
Three elderly residents of a nursing home, fed up with their monotonous existence, engineer an escape from their drab surroundings and head for an impromptu holiday on an Irish island.
