The film stars Marise Dauvray as Edith, a woman who is unhappily married to an older man, François (Séverin-Mars), but is actually in love with a young poet, Jean Diaz (Romuald Joubé). Both Jean and François end up on the front lines of World War I while Edith is captured by German forces and suffers atrocities at the hands of the soldiers. Gance juxtaposes individual human suffering with the more massive horrors of war, all depicted with a mixture of stark realism and avant-garde expressionism.