In the wake of a violent rape at the hands of her father's assistant (Fritz Rasp), young Thymiane Henning (Louise Brooks) is left pregnant and emotionally drained. But when she refuses to marry her attacker, she's sent away to a woman's reformatory. With an unfair act deciding her fate, is respectability still within her reach -- or is she destined to live on the fringe? German filmmaker G.W. Pabst directs this black-and-white silent classic.