“When Eva, an orphan of a noble family, comes of age, she leaves the nunnery and enter into full possession of her family’s mines, which were managed until then by her tutor Rudolf. The tutor, unwilling to give up the control, tries to provoke the miners, by harassing them and by pretending it was Eva’s order. In the meantime the girl meetsJura, a mysterious man, something between a prophet and an anchoret, who was adopted by a sorceress, and spent his whole life in the depths of the mine and is the one leader of the miners. It is Jura who is to save Eva from the exasperated miners who want to lynch her. By doing that, Jura obtains to be hated by Rudolf and to be accused of being a criminal. In this first half, A Banya Titka deploys a typical feuilleton-like plot, with young, noble and ‘naives’ girls, and exotic heros. The story runs fluently and the ‘suspense’ is always there, until it explodes in the scenes of the fire and the fantastic rescue”.

(Giacomo Manzoli)