Baracs Pista, engineer at the construction site of a railway line near the Korláthy estate, falls in love with Rolla, a countess disguised as a peasant girl. The count is giving a party as he wants the railway line to go across his lands.
In 1905 Hungary, a young village woman has just undergone a marriage to the spoiled son of a man to whom her father is indebted, in order that the debt be cancelled, only to be spirited away by her true love, a young peasant, by whom she soon becomes pregnant. Together they attempt to find a way to buy up her father's debt and also pay for a divorce from her husband, against various odds.
The story is about a woman who is waiting for the return from the war of her front-line soldier husband. Ilonka and her two children return from the village to their apartment in Budapest. Her husband is held captive by the Americans and awaits the first opportunity to return home, but he does not yet know that his fellow soldiers suspect him of complicity in crimes. In the meantime, Ilonka takes a job in a factory to make a living...
