Dir.: János Szász; Script: János Szász D'après la nouvelle de/Based on the novella by: Géza Csáth; Phot.: Tibor Máthé; Ed.: Anna Kornis; Mus.: Maia Morgenstern, Lajos Kovács, Alpár Fogarasi, Szabolcs Gergely, Péter Andorai, Juli Sándor; Cast: Ferenc Kardos, Budapest Filmstudio, Rona u. 174, Budapest 1145 (Hongrie), tél.: (1) 251 85 68, fax: (1) 251 04 78; Prod. & Sales: 47ème Parallèle, 7, rue Moulnier, 75013 Paris (France), tél.: (01) 45 81 09 98, fax: (01) 45 89 64 14.

In Hungary, 1914, the death of a tax-collector, Dénes Witman, leaves his close relatives unmoved. Mrs. Witman, his charming but selfish widow, cares more about her new lover than about her adolescent sons. With their father's death, the family is left without direction or rules. The Witman boys, János 14 and Ern 12, have to create their own. They are desperately searching for meaning in their lives. They find it at an old brothel occupied by a young woman. At first the young prostitute is kind to them, giving them the tenderness and love they crave, but she soon gets bored with the boys and will only let them in if they bring gifts. The boys find a beautiful pendant in a glass cabinet in their mother's bedroom. When their father died the boys sacrificed animals to exorcise his death. Now they desperately want the pendant and they will do anything to get it, even if it means sacrificing their mother. "Géza Csáth (from whose work the film was adapted)... was a contemporary of Kafka and Musil (and) one of the most contradictory figures of pre-World War I Hungarian literature... He was also a music critic and a neurologist... As a writer he described a bleak, feverish, inhuman and apathetic world. He used to 'dissect' his characters' souls the way a forensic surgeon would dissect corpses..." -- János Szász "A genuinely chilling item, set in a provincial town in 1914, about a pair of brothers who become fascinated with sex and death... Eerily atmospheric." -- David Stratton (Variety)