影片是导演希区柯克在1930年根据希恩·奥凯西的舞台剧改编成的。同样这部影片也是被称为“悬念大师”的希区柯克的早期作品。
什么是悬念？希区柯克曾经给悬念下过一个著名的定义：如果你要表现一群人围着一张桌子玩牌，然后突然一声爆炸，那么你便只能拍到一个十分呆板的炸后一惊的场面。另一方面，虽然你是表现这同一场面，但是在打牌开始之前，先表现桌子下面的定时炸弹，那么你就造成了悬念，并牵动观众的心。
《朱诺与孔雀》着重体现战争年代人们的生活状态，精妙的构思以及故事的突然转折，无不体现了悬念的魅力！
爱尔兰的局势动荡不安，公民党执政，四处抓捕对立派，镇压集会，政府认为地下组织准备起义推翻政府，重建新的国家。
就这样，爱尔兰人民没有安宁的日子，人们讨厌战争和暴政，真想把执政党赶下台，对国家完全失去了希望，每个夜晚都担惊受怕。而且在艰难的日子里，所有人都很难找到工作，“船长”伯尔梦想出海，巨大的家庭债务让他头痛不已，如何生存下去成为了非常严峻的问题。当他走投无路时，朋友馈赠给他一笔遗产解了燃眉之急，可也让他放弃了梦想，他更加懒惰了，不再寻找工作，很快钱用完了，家里又变得一贫如洗，灾难再次降临他的头上，女儿身患绝症无钱医治，儿子也被警察以叛党罪逮捕枪杀，面临灾难，伯尔抛下可怜的妻子走了。

Mae Feather, famous British screen actress, is publicised as a perfect wife, and is seen everywhere with her husband, Julian Gordon, a Western star employed by the same studio. Actually she is having an affair with Andy Wilks, a star comedian. Julian discovers this and decides on a divorce, which could ruin Mac’s position with her public. Desperate, she decides to kill her husband at the studios by inserting a real bullet into a ‘prop’ gun, used by the villain in the film to ‘kill’ Julian. The shot is fired, but the blank bullet is used, and Julian is unharmed. Instead, the gun is taken to another set, used in a comedy scene in Andy’s picture, and the real bullet kills him. Mac has a nervous breakdown. Julian divorces her; she begins to slip down the ladder of success.
As the years pass, he becomes a famous film director, while she is forgotten. She gets work as a film extra, and unknowingly Julian uses her in a crowd scene for his new picture. Mac waits until everyone has gone at the end of the day, and asks him: ‘Will you want me any more?’ Without looking at her, he shakes his head and she passes through the studio door, out of his life forever.
Excerpt© ‘Puffin Asquith’ by R.J. Minney.

It is pouring with rain at one minute to midnight on Friday the thirteenth, and the driver of a London bus is peering through his blurred windscreen as his vehicle sails down an empty road. Suddenly, lightning strikes, and a vast crane above topples into the path of the oncoming bus... Then Big Ben begins to wind backwards. Time recedes. And we discover the lives of all the passengers and the events that brought them to that late-night bus journey, from the con-man with a hundred-pound cheque to the businessman's distraught and elderly wife. Time flows on, inevitably, to the crash -- and past it, as some live and some die.

'A woman reporter is blackmailed for knowledge of freed suspect's involvement in a murder.' (British Film Institute)