The film is an adaptation of Władysław Terlecki’s novel of the same title. The central character is a maturing artist who is put in a cell with two other people, the famous safebreaker Szpicbródka and Sykstus, a former monk. What deserves particular attention is how the film’s disorderly plot gives way to the free play of imagination.
Rafał, a journalist and editor of the anti-clerical magazine “Diabeł” (“The Devil”), is sent to the tsar’s prison. He shares a cell with the safebreaker Szpicbródka and Sykstus, an ex-monk who murdered his lover’s husband. The situation, environment and company he finds himself in give Rafał an idea for a brilliant novel, a study of evil. His unusual cell companions become the characters of his book. As the war front approaches, the prison becomes deserted. Rafał leaves its walls continuing his internal monologue.
