Mac Teague is a mine worker who has a violent attitude: he throws another man from a pier.
Mac's mother lived with the thought that her son could start a business. So, Mac left with the dentist to learn the trade.
he acts as assistant to the charlatan dentist and a few years later he opens his own laboratory. Here, a friend of his arrives presenting Tina, his girlfriend.
In the weeks that followed, Trina came to him every day. Mac gives her the ether and after the crisis and hesitations
he kisses her. Frightened by his weakness, Marc resumed his work. Time later, Marc and Marcus meet at the bar and Marcus reveals that he is enchanted by Tina, the first girl he met. Marcus gives Tina to Mac saying: "Friends forever or death".
Mac invites the whole family of Tina and spends a pleasant day.
In a shot in the American plane, Mac and Trina are sitting on the pier and he sings accompanying himself with the accordion.
Mac, after accompanying Trina at home, kissing her and asking her to marry him, is under water and says to himself: "She's mine", banging a fist in the other hand. Trina and Mac are engaged and celebrate going to a premiere in the theater. Trina wins 5,000 dollars in the lottery. Mac and Tina get married and Trina's tendency to save becomes an obsession. Trina becomes unbearable for Marc. A law is made for which dentists need a certificate to work. Mac can not work anymore because reported by Marc and Trina tells him to collect as much money as possible until he can work. Suddenly no one goes to his study and Mac despairs consoled by Trina.
Trina continues to be thirsty for money and does not leave a nickel to Marc for the carriage, despite having to face a long journey and it rains. Marc 's lack of interest in her increases every day like her avarice. to such an extent that Mac returns in the evening after he has eaten nothing the day and Trina tells him that he wants to see him before starving before giving him the money.
A close up of a Mac with a dark direction of photography highlights the bursting thunder that is about to burst inside Mac.
Trina escapes with money but exasperated Mac follows her in search more money than Trina to the point of venturing to the Valley of Death. The very long fields show the immensity of the desert and the smallness of man in comparison.
The snake is the symbol of an obstinate nature. The Valley of Death is so wild that even the beasts are afraid to face it.
The setting sun represents the sunset of reason and also of the survival instinct. The hatred and greed also move Marc, who reaches Mac with which he undertakes a furious quarrel with interludes of the mirages of the treasure.
Mac and Marc bind themselves with handcuffs, just as their destinies are mortally bound. When greed turns into obsession that breaks the strength and bond of a couple. Mac after a difficult and heavy past in the mine, as soon as he comes out into the outside world, he finds an improvement in condition and finds peace in a girl, which however upsets his existence and his character. Mac is like a snake that changes mute, is at peace with the outside but its source of peace bites him to the point of making the mute again. A last mute where it leaves in the old skin also a good survival instinct to take virally from the source that once gave him happiness brutal obsessions.