The title of this Hungarian melodrama translates as the deliberately oxymoronic Gay Misery. Based on a novel by Adorjan Bonyi, the story concerns the romance between a wealthy girl and her poverty-stricken tutor. The heroine's parents are dead set against such a union, whereupon the tutor goes off to parts unknown to seek his fortune, thereby making himself worthy of marriage. Meanwhile, his sweetheart bows to family pressure and enters into a loveless marriage with an aristocrat. Hoping to save his sister from a lifetime of misery, the heroine's brother shoots her wealthy suitor, apparently killing the man. The brother is saved from the gallows by the "miraculous" resurrection of his victim, who wasn't dead after all. Somehow this leads to a happy ending for the girl and her impoverished beau.