In the aftermath of World War II in the Sudetenland in Northern Moravia, a young Czech airman recently returned from service in the Royal Air Force, is given the management of a former German estate. There he meets the beautiful Adelheid, the former owner's daughter who once lived in the estate but is now reduced to servitude. The Czech airman falls in love with Adelheid, but lingering resentment and bitter political strife stand in the way of their happiness.
Though Czech-born and possessing the rank of lieutenant, Viktor Chotovický has spent much of the war in Aberdeen, Scotland, working in an RAF desk job. After a series of misunderstandings concerning his arrival that underline the dominant atmosphere of uncertainty and paranoia, Viktor makes himself known to Inspector Hejna, and is charged with the task of looking after the Heidenmann's large country house and drawing up an inventory of its contents. It's a job that suits him perfectly, as he doesn't have to talk to many people.
Adelheid Heidenmann is initially assumed to be an innocent victim of widespread anti-German prejudice, but it transpires that she's the daughter of a notorious local Nazi war criminal currently on trial, whose inevitable execution is imminent. Each day she leaves the camp to clean the now unoccupied mansion house that was once her home.
In a near wordless exchange, Viktor finds himself enamoured by Adelheid, even though she is really his servant and has little choice under the circumstances. He allows her to stay in the house and tries to build her trust and affection, but with no common language he has to piece together Adelheid's life from visual clues, old photographs and letters. Soon Viktor discovers that it is impossible to exist in such a vacuum, especially at a time of national turbulence. Whatever his private feelings for Adelheid, it's politically and socially impossible to express them in public, even in a supposedly liberated country. Eventually he will discover that she's much more morally ambiguous than he first imagined, and has to confront his own conscience when he finds that she is sheltering her German-soldier brother.
A tragic, compelling and beautifully filmed love story that transcends the absence of verbal communication. It was, in 1969, the first film to controversially address the Czech treatment of Germans during the expulsions of the mid-1940s.
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