In the midst of the tumultuous Napoleonic era, Frenchman Edmond Dantes (Robert Donat) is charged with a trumped-up crime and sent to prison. But after years of confinement, he escapes, and in the process secures a vast fortune hidden away on the island of Monte Cristo, off the Italian coast. Rebranding himself as a man of nobility and means, Edmond aims to settle scores with traitorous former friend Mondego (Sidney Blackmer) and the others who took his freedom and his fiancée (Elissa Landi).