Julius

A dark, twisted tale of the meteoric rise-and-fall of a peasant boy who becomes an enormously wealthy miser through obsessive work and greed, with a sociopathic drive to use everyone around him as an object in pursuit of his personal mantra: “something for nothing.” One might call him a sadist, but his actions -- which include the killing of innocents -- doesn’t seem to bring him pleasure any more than his obsessions to work and gain wealth. There is a touch of Zola here with Du Maurier setting the early events in France and suggesting that Julius is inevitably sent down this road from the moment of his birth by his upbringing and his genes.