"When things are too quiet, I tell myself that nothing good can come of it. Where there isn’t anything to fight for, cinematography can be written off, because film is the art of opposition." Director Zbynek Brynych’s words from this interview in 1968 most certainly apply to this film in which the understated acting contrasts sharply with the acute camera angles, harsh lighting and shock editing. Set during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, a Jewish doctor removes a bullet from a wounded Resistance fighter and begins a nightmarish search for morphine through the streets of Prague. Although the film begins as a fairly realistic portrayal of the life of a Czech Jew under Nazi control, it begins to shift into an expressionist Orwellian fable that is not easily forgotten.