After the first Communist revolution in Hungary in 1919, soldiers of the Red Army are in hiding from government patrols. One of them is sheltered by a farmer who is suspicious of him. His wife and sister-in-law both love the refugee and their own safety. They plan to get rid of the farmer by slow poisoning. The refugee discovers their plot, but can only expose it by giving himself up to the commandant of the local gendarmerie, who is a relative, an old childhood friend.. ..

The director of The Round-up increases his stature still further, developing a political idea the prototype of which is as old as world history. Life must be preserved, even if some people have to die for it. He continues to experiment, this time building up drama in a closed situation without psychological reactions from events. Cutting is used very sparingly, so that long sequences of unbroken motion give an illusion of the pace of life itself.