There are two ways of seing The Scoundrel: one, as the story of a vigilante friar, zealous caretaker of goodness and order who, after suffering unrequited love for an engaged woman, becomes a terrifying villain in a quiet town. Another, as the lost film of Conrad Wilhelm Meyersick, a German engineer and amateur filmmaker who, in 1920, was in Guimarães, a small town in northern Portugal, to install three weaving machines in a factory and, during his stay, filmed this story.