Following his American masterpiece Lonesome (1928), Paul Fejös returned to Hungary and made this film that, like Lonesome, works with the expressive qualities of image and montage-and here, music and ambient sound-making dialogue unnecessary. The French actress Annabella turns in a classic performance as Marie, a maid in a peasant household who is made pregnant by a suitor of the daughter of the house, and mercilessly driven from the village. Reduced to scrubbing floors in a city brothel, she finds a home in the hearts of the madam and her prostitutes. Marie has her wretched triumph in heaven, as the film plays on legend. But the story is in the cinematography, sparkling and painterly-and perfectly canny. The Hungarian critical establishment excoriated Fejös for his harsh social criticism of the pretensions and hypocrisy of peasantry and bourgeoisie alike, forcing him to work abroad again; but historians place Marie in the best tradition of Hungarian filmmaking.