The second, and unfortunately. the last feature film made by a unique talent among Slovak filmmakers, Elo Havetta, is one of the most originial pictures of Slovak cinematography. The film was conceived as a paraphrase of Vincent Šikula's prose, the tragic episodes of which screenwriter Lubor Dohnal and Havetta composed into a dramatic story. The main characters are veterans coming home from the First World War. And while they feel a need to find A home and settle down, they are also driven by a passion for a vagrant's free life.

Janosík, a friar retrained as a bandit, becomes the farmers' symbol of resistance and fight against the feudal conditions.