Three Crowns of the Sailor

The film opens in black and white with the motiveless murder of a professor by his student in Warsaw in 1958. The student walks through the war-torn streets whereupon he meets a sailor who offers him passage from the country through a job on board a ship. They go into a dancehall to wine and dine while they negotiate the deal; the student agrees to listen to the sailor's life story as part of the payment and then to give him three Danish crowns.