It all begins with the rattling of the iron tracks and a heavy sorrow filtering through the steam. In the years when cinema was still silent, Abel Gance portrays the life of Sisyphus, a railroad worker, on the iron tracks and the great secret he keeps buried within himself. We witness the gradual inner decay of a father who, having rescued a girl from the midst of a train wreck and raised her as his own child, slowly crumbles from within as the years pass. This drama focuses on the darkest and quietest corners of the human soul. As the roar of the tracks fills the house, the passions suppressed by a father’s love for his child become entangled. Suitors knocking on the young girl’s door only weigh down the burden on Sisyphus’s shoulders even further. The weariness in his eyes deepens a little more with every train that departs. This time, the engineer’s hands are not trying to stop a train, but the web of fate she has woven with her own hands.