The Nude

Young prisoner Jan, nicknamed Roughboy [Drsňák], tries to commit suicide. He was imprisoned for a fight in which he injured a functionary of the National Committee named Froněk, and for stealing material but actually by the blame for this crime was pinned on him by the road-builders in whose group he worked. The prison doctor knows that Jan is an emotionally deprived person who never knew his parents and spent all his childhood - except one year with foster-parents - in orphanages, homes for youth and reform schools. He arranges a five-day holiday for Jan, who wants to find his mother's grave. The old foster-parents do not know anything about her and Roughboy thus goes to the town where he lived. In a hotel, he visits his former lover, waitress Štěpa, who takes him in for the night. At the National Committee, the young man finds Secretary Froněk, who informs him that his mother was buried in the village Horní Světlá. Upon his arrival at the village, Jan learns from the sexton that she committed suicide as a very young woman, unable to bear the fate of an unmarried mother. In the village, Jan meets the pretty teacher, Jarmila. She, too, has unsolved traumas from her past and is afraid of physical love. She does not know anything about Jan and is somehow irritated by his behaviour. Despite this, they visit a wine cellar and the slight drunkenness makes it easier for them to become closer. After a night full of love, conscience wakes up in Roughboy and he reveals his situation to Jarmila. The young woman feels that another dream of hers has evaporated and Roughboy drowns his sorrow in drink in the local pub. They both remain alone.