Ashes and Diamonds

During the German occupation nobles, bourgeois and workers' partisan groups lived in peace with another. On the first day of freedom they start to fight each other. Maciek and Andrzej (noble group) get the task of killing a Communist leader (Szczuka). They have carefully chosen the place where Szczuka will soon come in a car, but another car with two innocent persons come a little earlier, and both are shot in the belief that one of them is Szczuka. They learn about their mistake when Szczuka and his co-worker check into a hotel. Maciek manages to get the room next to Szczuka's. It turns out that Szczuka's son is in a noble partisan group. A very tender love story, one of the best ever made, develops between Maciek and the waitress Krystyna. This makes Maciek want a normal life. Andrzej is his superior but also his friend. They agree that Maciek alone will finish the Szczuka affair and then leave the partisan group. Andrzej will go to Warsaw to replace an officer who has been killed. Maciek shoots Szczuka in the street. His shots are drowned by the midnight fireworks but he knows that it would mean suicide to stay with Krystyna. The plot is not finished with their leave, which is particularly painful to her.