Miss Nováková reports to Major Tuma (Karel Höger) from the police about the disappearance of her roommate, the model Zuzana. Shortly afterwards, a film director named Konrád (Otomar Krejca) asks Tuma to cooperate on a new cinéma-vérité film describing the story of Zuzana's disappearance.
A British citizen by the name of George Reiner (Jirí Sovák) arrives at Prague airport. He was once a Czech safe-breaker, and has now returned home after thirty years to steal twenty-dollar gold coins still kept in the safe at a private villa in Pilsen whose owner fled to the West.
An unemployed young man in the second half of the 1930s, he tries various ways of making a living and, under the influence of a group of communist youth, eventually goes to Spain as an inter-brigadista...
A group of soldiers is supposed to ensure the smooth nighttime passage of the military convoy through Prague, but things turn out differently. Eloquent young men convince the good-natured commander to sign a leave of absence, and the main character is left alone in the middle of a housing estate...
Getting out of prison doesn't mean being free. After the bloody suppression of the Prague Revolution in 1848, one of its participants, the writer František Vinický, spent eight years in prison. Returning to Prague in 1857, he tries to make contact with his former friends. The main one is his...