Ne'er-do-well Peter Willems (Trevor Howard), recently fired from his job in a counting house in the Dutch East India colony of Makassar, settles in a remote village in Borneo. At first accepted by the local colonists, including the shady trading post official Almayer (Robert Morley) and the kind-hearted Captain Lingard (Ralph Richardson), Willems soon resumes his downward spiral, spurred by his obsession with a beautiful native woman, Aissa (Kerima).