Psychological and sociological portrait of Camillo Castiglioni, the king of inflation, who became one of Europe's richest men in the twenties through speculation and war profiteering.
The story takes place in March of 1943 during transportations of Jews from Skopje. Nikola is a surgeon who was taken his working license away, and spends evening hours at the local bar where German officers, along with Bulgarian officer Simeonov, play Russian roulette with their gun pointed at prisoner's head. After suicide of one German mayor, Nikola and the prisoner escape.
Cinematographer turned director (Xaver Schwarzenberger) has filmed a small, wintry story of epic human proportions. A young doctor (Hanno Poeschi) exiles himself to a remote Austrian village when he accidentally causes a death. Once at the village, winter sets in and against that harsh and poetic backdrop a rabies epidemic sweeps through the population. The doctor convinces people he is a biologist but then he treats someone bitten and gives his real profession away. As the epidemic raises questions of life and death, the doctor's mind is brought back to the death that caused his exile and he considers suicide for awhile. The same issues come up again when an enraged villager goes on a killing spree and in turn, is hunted by the citizens. Faced with the prevalence of death all around him, the doctor starts to gain some perspective on the personal experience that brought him here in the first place.
This film combines two very different styles: an atmospheric psycho thriller about the ice-cold hired gun (masterfully played by Frank Gorschin), and the bizarre satire of the Austrian TV serial "Kottan ermittelt".
