This is a film which was made in Belgium in the early '60s and was never released. However, it somehow got included in the American Oscar category for "Best Foreign Film," and was finally released in its home country in 1971. It explores the issues of prejudice and superstition in the Belgian countryside through the troubles of a middle-aged farmer whose mother has been accused of being a witch. In French, this picture is based on a true story which took place in the late 1920s and early '30s.
Martin, a sculptor, is dying in his bed on a barge that floats along a fog-shrouded waterway. As he agonizingly descends into a final oblivion, his second wife is at his bedside, comforted by his first wife -- also present.
At 45, divorced, unemployed and father of two children, Franois Morot realizes that he can no longer support the society in which he lives and decides to leave everything.
