A drug-addicted New York police officer, enslaved by his passion for gambling, encounters a raped nun and discovers a new dimension of spirituality. Ultimately, he finds salvation in a vision of Christ descending from the cross. This is a relentlessly harsh character study of a person in existential chaos who tries in an unusual way to endure the extreme tension between looking into the abyss of ugliness and meanness and the purity of the spiritual. The director subjects the viewer to an experience that is not easily shaken off: despite its harshness, the film is an unusual treatment in cinema of the question of humanity's need for salvation.

Print from the collection of Kino im Blauen Salon (HfG KA)