Feature film version of the 1971 series. On the eve of the 18th century, County Vicecomes Görgey Pál broods alone in his manor while the town of Leutschau celebrates New Year’s with lead‐casting omens and a disastrous hunt that sparks a bitter feud. As Görgey fights for his honor and life, and the townspeople defend their Saxon privileges, their mutual blind ambition prevents them from seeing the rising light of Rákóczi’s coming rebellion.

The main character of this film reminiscent of political writing is Laci, the young and ambitious factory worker. He lives with his brother's family. After an unsuccessful attempt to escape from his native country and the prison sentence which follows it he gets employed by Pray, the progressive thinker, at a newly established computer centre. It is here that Laci learns to know Anna, the new-leftist university student, daughter of the general manager. Tóth, although he does not favour their relationship, does not oppose it either.

In the aftermath of World War II, a Hungarian teenager, captured by Soviet troops, forms an unlikely bond with a Russian soldier in a remote prison camp.

Janos Flandera (Frigyes Funtek) is a student who is kept by an older woman in this depressing drama. When he applies to a prestigious school in Moscow, he is turned down because he is a gigolo. Not only is his scholarship request denied, he is sentenced to a year in prison at hard labor. Janos abandons the jealous older woman who helped deny his entrance to the school. Punished after defending a political prisoner, Janos takes solace in love affairs, but his union with the crippled daughter of a prominent political official puts his life in danger.

Allegory of the suppression of the 1919 revolution and the advent of fascism in Hungary; in the countryside, a unit of the revolutionary army spares the life of father Vargha, a fanatical priest. He comes back and leads massacres. A new force, represented by Feher, apparently avenges the people, but only to impose a different, more refined and effective kind of repression.

Croatian anarchists collaborate with Hungarians to make a bid for the life of King Alexander of Yugoslavia.