Heron of Fois (Assi Dayan), a student from Paris, crosses territory devastated by the upheaval and the ferocious reprisals of the nobility.

He meets with Claudia (Anjelica Huston), the aristocratic daughter of a royal official killed by the peasants, and they attempt to reach Calais.

The film was not a box-office success,[3] but John Huston noted in his autobiography An Open Book (1980) that it was highly praised in France, where there was a greater understanding of the historical context.

Comparisons were variously made with the Vietnam War or the Paris rioting of May/June that year, which required filming to be relocated to Austria and Italy.

However a recent and detailed analysis of both novel and film by the essayist Peter G. Christensen concludes that the story is literally a period one, intended to evoke the turbulence of its 14th-century setting rather than illustrating cultural or generational issues of the late 1960s.