. The doomed love of a city girl caught in the vise of poverty is detailed in Vavra's fluid, romantic work, one of the most elegant creations of the Czech Modernist era. The lovely Hana finds herself on the street after her lecherous stepfather turns a little too attentive, but her new job in a cafeteria offers no respite. When it's not the customers, it's the boss: lechers all around, except the young composer Pavel, whose heart is as large as his lungs are weak. Soon Hana must make a fateful decision, one that may save his life, but end their love. The film lingers over its characters' habitats and haunts, finding psychological truths in what each owns or desires, and countering every Hollywood-ready scene of gleaming restaurants and dazzling penthouses with realist moments of employment lines and crammed flats. Vavra's classical camerawork and aura of romantic defeatism give Virginity a force comparable to the master of this genre, Hollywood's Frank Borzage.