Romantic love between two socially disparate people binds and separates a young man and young woman in this traged based on Nobel Prize-winner Knut Hamsun's novel. In order to win the right to be invited into the house of a wealthy girl whom he loves, a miller's son struggles and becomes a writer. However, the girl's father is now deeply in debt, and needs to get her married off to a rich suitor. When the wealthy groom dies in a hunting accident, it begins to look as though the writer and his lady-love can finally be united, but it becomes apparent that she has tuberculosis. They are together for only a brief time before she dies.
~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide