Based on the autobiographical novel by the poet and film aesthetician Béla Balázs, Rózsa's visually stunning second film evokes the ambience of provincial Hungary in the beginning of the century, portraying a young lad's steps into adolescence concurrent with the early rumblings of the Russian Revolution as they begin to be felt in his sleepy town. Hermann is the 12-year-old son of the teacher Mr. Bauer and his wife Jenny, whose hermetic, intellectual world still thrives on the French reading circles of 19th century society. When one such conclave is interrupted by a group of radical Russian emigrés, the Bauers are excommunicated by the town's entrenched establishment, and Mr. Bauer starts a rapid decline. Meanwhile Hermann has formed a friendship with an aggressive boy whose mean streak jars his own fragile sensitivity into radical action. When Hermann becomes witness to a whole universe of contemporary events through the new medium of a traveling cinema show, the old world finally gives way to the new.