Popular Dutch story of a troubled boy who doesn't get along with his mother while his sailor father is gone, and whose only help saving him from a career of crime is a schoolteacher.
The movie is about a boy who lives a difficult life during the crisis years in the early '30. His father who he loves most is a sailor and his stepmother is a dreadful woman.
They call hem `the Rat' and he has only one real friend, his teacher.
After killing his stepmother he is send to jail but there things turn around.