In István Szabó's second feature film, the director focuses on a Hungarian boy, Tako (Dani Erdélyi), living in Budapest just after the end of World War II. His father (Miklós Gábor), a doctor and member of the partisan resistance to the Nazis, was killed just as the war ended, leaving the very impressionable boy with mixed-up memories and a curiosity about his father's life that turns into an unsettling hero worship. The story is told in a series of flashbacks--some of them factual, some inspired by the tall tales about his father that Tako tells his friends to impress them.

Shot in black and white by Sándor Sára, who would do wonderful color work in Szabó's 25 FIREMAN'S STREET, the film's present-time action has a historical feel and, when combined with actual news footage in the flashbacks, forms a smooth transition between the different times. A third period is added when Tako, now played by András Bálint, reaches adulthood at the time of the Russian invasion in 1956. He becomes involved in the radical youth movement and feels he must emulate his father's bravery. When Tako meets Anni (Katalin Sólyom), a Jewish woman, the story of her parents death in Auschwitz causes him to re-examine his memories of his father. Szabó's episodic, well-staged and -acted film evocatively captures the feelings and attitudes of the first generation of Hungarians to grow up after the war.