 In World War II, the illiterate, starving and alcoholic twenty years old René Le Guen fights to survive and lives with his dysfunctional family in a slum. The French Resistance invites and teaches him to kill Germans and traitors. When the war ends, he continues to kill and is arrested, judged and sentenced to death in the guillotine. While in prison waiting for a possible presidential pardon claimed by his lawyer, he meets other prisoners also waiting for the dishonored death.