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One night, Maloin – who works as pointsman in a port railway station – witnesses a horrible crime. From his control post placed high-up on top of iron pillars, he watches as the last ship arrives. Suddenly he sees how the first passenger to leave the boat, a tall and thin man (Brown), instead of leaving the pier after his passage through customs, hides in the dark as if waiting for someone. Over the ship’s bow appears a man who throws a suitcase to the first man who catches it and stands in a dark corner to await his partner. When he arrives, a dispute breaks out, soon followed by blows. After a deadly blow, the smaller man having caught the suitcase from the taller one, falls into the water and sinks. Horrified, Maloin sees what is happening. After mastering his fright, he opens his door noisily. The murderer takes fright and runs away, leaving the suitcase in the water. When Maloin sees that Brown has run away and disappeared in one of the lanes behind the port, he leaves his control post and goes down to the beach. He is not able to save the drowned man, but he finds the suitcase in the water and takes it up with him to the control post. He opens the suitcase and sees it contains a big amount of money. He does not call the police, nor does he run after the murderer. He watches the money in the open suitcase. He is dazzled by the amount of money he is drying and counting. He hides the money in the cupboard and locks it. At dawn, when his day shift colleague arrives, Maloin acts as if nothing has happened and goes home. From that moment on, the way home is not the same as the one he has been taking for many years. His orderly life, his daily routine, the habits repeated hundreds and thousands of times, of which he is tired but with which he has been complying – everything has broken down. Maloin now carries this secret with him everywhere: among relatives, friends, at his job in the control post in the small town where he lives. His life has been turned upside down. He is not able to forget. He feels connected to the murder, to the money and especially to the murderer who vainly searches the suitcase in the water. Brown can feel Maloin’s eyes following him from the tower. Instinctively Brown starts turning around the pointsman, following him when he leaves the port for home, watching him drinking his daily glass of calvados at the hotel bar, observing Maloin’s sudden lavishness. Brown follows Maloin everywhere, and by the time he decides to confront him, the whole town has been chasing him. Meanwhile, the true owner of the suitcase who owns a London cabaret, as well as a detective, whose aims at finding the money quietly and at any cost, are in town. The detective’s intuition as well as the circumstances of the theft at the cabaret led him to suspect Brown. Now it seems that he is not only looking for this thief, famous in the police for his clumsiness, but for a murderer also, since the accomplice’s dead body was found. Having received a telegram from the cabaret owner, Brown’s wife arrives and is being disgracefully blackmailed to visibly walk through the town’s street, so that her husband sees her and comes out of hiding. The local authorities, hundreds of policemen and soldiers encircle the town, and the frightened murderer gets nearer and nearer to Maloin. Seeing this man hunt, Maloin who is also frightened but can do nothing, is drawn to Brown. On the last day, Brown exhausted and starved hides in a fishing cabin on the beach at the end of the town, a cabin he happens to find unlocked. A strange fate has led him to a cabin belonging to Maloin. When Maloin hears from his daughter that there is a stranger in their cabin, he cannot control himself and without knowing why, he takes with him food for the man. He forcibly enters the cabin. In the dark, Brown and Maloin frighten each other. They exchange blows and during that fight, Maloin takes a nailed stick that is used for catching crabs, and gives Brown a fatal blow. Maloin remains frozen for a long time, then leaves the cabin with his victim in it. He fetches the suitcase to return it to its owners who are waiting at the hotel, and to give himself up to the police. The suitcase is given to the cabaret owner who starts counting the money with his daughter. The detective, Brown’s wife and Maloin walk hastily towards the cabin to check whether the blow was really deadly. It’s true, Brown is dead!!! Brown’s wife breaks down, the detective explains to Maloin that he acted in self defense; that Maloin is innocent and that the money was returned. Maloin becomes deeply apathetic. He cannot comprehend. He walks around for hours, without aim. Finally he reaches the beach, unties a boat and disappears among the waves, never to be seen again. Director's Concept If I have to say why I liked this story and why I decided to work with it, the answer has to be that it brings together the universal and the everyday. It's cosmic, but it focuses on the details of reality, it is divine and human. For me it involves a totality of Man and Nature – just as it involves their pettiness. I came to like Maloin… Maloin: a man who lives simply, beside the endless sea and with no real perspectives, he is barely aware of the world around him, he has come to terms with his slow and constant isolation and loneliness. His contacts are narrowing, more and more automated; the best of them is with the gull he feeds everyday and which he tamed. But when Maloin witnesses a murder, his life changes. He has to face moral questions: what is a crime and what is punishment, where is the line between innocence and complicity? The process of doubt leads him to question the meaning and value of life. Is there meaning and value? Maloin comes through this, the greatest of tests. After committing the most serious crime, he may have lost his simple innocence but he has preserved his honesty. Old and bold and creased by time, he finally becomes an adult. But being adult and wise is too much for anyone who wishes to stay alive. He has earned dignity with great difficulty and that dignity can only be kept by a dignifying suicide. His last strokes of the oars lead him back into the embrace of the eternal and endless sea. The tone of the film becomes personal. Each frame will produce the way I see the world, in style I aim at a puritan simplicity, through which I can bring to life the complexity of Maloin's proletarian world, as authentically and as lovingly as I can.
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