Dreyer's first feature is a convoluted melodrama about the ruin of an aristocratic family as a result of the sexual indulgences of its male heirs and the attendant illegitimacies. The plot concerns the last of the line, an eminent judge who, faced with a youthful child-murderer, recognizes her as his own illegitimate daughter and must choose between saving his career and saving her from execution. The novelistic story is presented through a series of flashbacks and parallel time sequences whose contrivance is countered by Dreyer's subtle photographic sense. In his book, “The Cinema of Carl Dreyer,” Tom Milne notes shots worthy of Bergman and Antonioni, and adds, “Most striking of all, perhaps, is the exquisitely shot sequence from the prologue of the lovers' idyll on a lake, which contains the famous series of images...often cited as proof that Dreyer could film erotically....” Milne notes that “much more Dreyerian” is the film's decor: “solid, stylish, uncluttered, and already revealing the characteristic black-white antithesis....” Dreyer himself has commented on his introduction of naturalistic elements into the Nordisk melodrama: “Even then I was beginning to do my own decors, and I also tried to simplify them. As for the actors...for the first time, I took, to play old people, old men and old women...at that time I was breaking with a tradition. I also took for bit parts...people I met on the street....”