Václav Švorc

The accountants at a agricultural cooperative near Prague have completed the calculation of wages. The driver with the cashier are leaving for a bank in Prague to withdraw the cash amounting to over one million crowns. On returning back, an oncoming heavy truck appears, crashing into their car. The injured men cannot defend themselves, and the whole cash is stolen from them.

Petr Rynes (Svatopluk Matyás) is celebrating his forty-fifth birthday in the company of his friends. He is happy with his wife, and his abilities at work have been rewarded with the medal For Outstanding Work. But a few short seconds are enough to change his life when he makes the ill-judged decision to take his car to bring a friend's wife to the celebration, and hits a pedestrian on the way. He has of course been drinking at the party and is consequently sentenced to sixteen months in prison. Being in jail is not an easy thing for a honorable communist. He soon gets into conflict with several violent inmates, who think they can break his spirit by violence.

In the thick woods at the edge of the Bohemian Forest, two border guards are keeping watch - rifleman Kucera (Rudolf Jelínek) and dog handler Stencl (Josef Hajducík), whose sluggishness and clumsiness have won him the nickname Simpleton. The official army dog, the bitch Líza, picks up the scent of an alien dog on the German side - Black Wolf. She bites through her leash and runs away. Soon afterwards, the border boundary was interrupted. The two soldiers are wounded in the gunfire that follows, but Stencl's shot also hits the target and the intruder - an attractive woman in a black jersey - is dead. The investigation reveals that this agent knew someone among the local residents. The locals are all called in to identify the body but nobody admits to knowing the woman.

Produzido para a televisão, relata uma tensa história sobre três soldados e um disparo fatídico.

Venice Film Festival 1955

A fiction piece centered around the Czech resistance to the Nazis.