It shows the filmmakers' experience with early American movies in camera work, in the use of parallel narratives, and in sequences inspired by Westerns.

Juraj Jánošík (Theodor Pištěk), a young, imposing seminary student, returns to his home village to find that his ailing mother has just died.

Born in Blatnica, Turiec County in central Slovakia and baptized Ludvik Jaroslav Siakeľ,[2] he immigrated to the United States in 1912 at the age of 16 and used Ludwig Jerry as his given names in English.

It was filmed on location in the vicinity of the Siakeľ brothers' birthplace in Slovakia,[4] on two sets constructed at the site, and finished on the sound stage at the A-B Studio in Prague.

However, Žák-Marušiak delivered barely a third of the screenplay before the team's departure for Slovakia, some of it arrived by mail during the shoot, and the rest did not reach them before the film was finished.

Theodor Pištěk in the dual role of Jánošík and of a hiker in the framing story was one of the most popular actors of the period who starred in nine other films in the same year.

[10] Mária Fábryová in the leading role of Jánošík's lover Anička was an amateur actress from the town of Martin in Turiec County (and related by marriage to one of the best known Slovak poets Pavol Országh Hviezdoslav).

[11] She got the part after her uncle Samuel Fábry, the chief founder and Secretary of Tatra Film, showed her photograph to the filmmakers and advanced her for the role.

It had premieres in Prague, in Chicago (Cicero, IL) at the now demolished 1150-seat Atlantic,[11] and in Žilina at the Grand Bio Universum (later Dom umenia Fatra).