AllMovie

This Hungarian fantasy moves easily from one time to the next as it almost simultaneously presents two train rides in the lifetime of a famous writer; the film is adapted from two short stories by Hungarian writer Dezso Kosztolanyi. The film opens with a scene following young aspiring writer Kornel Esti as he is chased in a train station by a woman disguised as death. The journeys begin. The first is in 1903 and follows the young Kornel as he journeys to the Italian coast. In the second, set in 1933, a middle-aged, burned out and cynical Kornel is heading to Germany to give a guest lecture. Upon both trips, Kornel encounters the same characters. In the first, Kornel is sexually initiated by an enigmatic blonde, meets a pretty woman and her gangly daughter who steals a kiss from the young writer, and has a brief fling with a waitress in a hayloft. In his later years he sees the same characters through jaded, disillusioned eyes. He is oppressed by thoughts of his own cowardly nature.