A young writer goes to Paris. He meets in the train a young woman forced to marry a wealthy casino manager in Monte Carlo. His true love for the girl is about to direct him to Monte Carlo and to turn himself into a compulsive gambler. He'll lose his money, his integrity and his principles to save this girl from her future while fighting the demon of gambling with the most powerful weapon a man can have love.
This is commonly known as Jean Renoir's first American film (1941), although Renoir scholar Alexander Sesonske has established that Renoir's creative role in the project was severely hampered by producer Darryl F. Zanuck and that he didn't regard much of the film as his own. (The ending, for instance, was written by Zanuck and directed by Irving Pichel.) Nevertheless, the film has certain beauties and pleasures. Part of it was shot in Georgia's Okefenokee swamp, and the treatment of the small community living ~Censored~ is often pungent and distinctive.
Story follows young man Strahinja who is in love with a local beauty Radojka, but their relationship has an obstacle - her father Zivan, who considers Strahinja as nothing but a loser. To prove that he's able to take care of himself and his future bride, Strahinja agrees to take vacancy in village mill... But, mill is known as a place where no one meets the dawn alive...