The film revolves around that veterinary student named Jacob. Jacob takes a job in a circus, meets and falls in love with Marlena. He discovers that Marlena, who is the performance star and the wife of the school principal, is engaged with an experiment in order to achieve their goals together.
Whatever romance Gruen summoned forth from this rough and tumble world of show people living by their own laws in a traveling, self-contained world of poverty and cruelty, director Francis Lawrence has hacked and ground it off.
