Roger Ebert Universal Press Syndicate A man gets drunk and commits a senseless murder. He is condemned to death by guillotine. But in the 1850s on a small French fishing island off the coast of Newfoundland, there is no guillotine, and no executioner. The guillotine can be shipped from France. But the island will have to find its own executioner, because superstitious ship captains refuse to allow one on board.
Time passes, and a strange and touching thing happens.
The murderer repents of his crime and becomes a useful member of the community. He saves a woman's life. He works in a garden started by the wife of the captain of the local military. He understands her slightest emotional clues. The film is too intelligent and subtle to make obvious what the woman herself hardly suspects, but if we watch and listen closely we realize she is stirred in a sensual way by the prospect of a prisoner who has been condemned to die.