| Director | Luchino Visconti |
|---|---|
| Budget | $2 million |
| Box office | $1.2 million |
In Germany in early 1933, the Essenbecks are a wealthy and powerful industrialist family who have, reluctantly, begun doing business with the newly elected Nazi government. On the night of the birthday of the family's conservative patriarch, Baron Joachim von Essenbeck, a member of the old German nobility who detests the upstart Adolf Hitler, the family's children have prepared performances. Joachim's grandnephew Günther plays a classical piece on his cello, while his grandson Martin performs a drag performance, which is interrupted by news that the Reichstag is burning. Assuming Hitler will use this incident to seize even greater control, Joachim announces at dinner that he is replacing Herbert Thallman, an outspoken anti-Nazi who is married to Joachim's niece Elizabeth, with his boorish and unscrupulous nephew Konstantin, who is an officer in the SA, as vice president of the family steelworks.
Martin's possessive mother, Sophie, has been in a relationship with Friedrich Bruckmann, an ambitious executive of the steelworks, for some time, but he has not proposed because he worries Joachim would not approve of him as the husband of the widow of Joachim's beloved son. Friedrich is friendly with Aschenbach, an Essenbeck relation who has attained a high position in the SS, and, acting on Aschenbach's suggestions that things would be better for him if the anti-Nazi Joachim were to die, Friedrich kills Joachim and frames Herbert for the crime by using his personal handgun. Herbert narrowly escapes abroad, but, in his haste, is forced to leave behind Elizabeth and their two daughters. Martin inherits the majority of shares in the steelworks, and Sophie manipulates him into placing Friedrich, rather than Konstantin, in charge.
Aschenbach convinces Friedrich and Martin to bar their company from selling weapons to the SA, in hopes of marginalizing the rival group and currying the favor of the army, whose might Hitler will need in order to conquer territories beyond the current German borders. Konstantin discovers that Martin has been sexually abusing his nieces and Lisa Keller, a young Jewish neighbor of Martin's girlfriend who commits suicide, and he uses this information to resume providing the SA with weapons and get Martin to call a meeting to place him in charge of the company. Sophie finds Martin hiding in the attic of the family castle and, mostly for Friedrich's sake, agrees to help free him from Konstantin's blackmail. She meets up with Aschenbach, who reveals that Hitler is planning to purge the SA, as he feels its work securing Nazi power in Germany is done, but its leader, Ernst Röhm, is unlikely to quietly let it take a back seat to the SS and army.
Many high-ranking members of the SA, including Konstantin, gather at a hotel in Bad Wiessee. They have a drunken celebration, and the evening ends with the officers engaging in sex with one another. At dawn, the hotel is stormed by SS troops, who slaughter the SA members. Konstantin is personally executed by Friedrich, whom Aschenbach brought along to make him do his own dirty work.
Friedrich is now in control of the steelworks, and Sophie even gets Aschenbach to arrange a decree that gives him her father-in-law's last name and noble title of Baron so they will be able to marry as equals. He is affected by all of his newfound power, and Aschenbach begins to feel that he is not displaying the appropriate subservience to National Socialism, so Aschenbach offers to help Martin destroy Sophie and Friedrich. Martin accepts, as he is bitter that his mother has used him to benefit Friedrich and herself.
During a family dinner, Friedrich announces that Aschenbach, Günther, and Martin must submit themselves to his will and whims, since he is now the head of the family. Herbert surprises everyone when he enters and reveals that, although Sophie had supposedly made arrangements for Elizabeth and her daughters to join Herbert in exile, they were really arrested and sent to Dachau, where Elizabeth died. Now a broken man, Herbert has returned to confess to murdering Joachim, in exchange for the release of his daughters. Günther, upset by this news, is enraged when Martin reveals that Friedrich killed Konstantin, and Aschenbach is able to use his hate to radicalize him to the Nazi cause.
Martin sexually assaults his mother, and she falls into a catatonic state. Without her help to strategize against Aschenbach and Martin, Friedrich is lost. Martin, who is now part of the SS, gets Friedrich and Sophie to go through the motions of getting married before ordering them to take cyanide capsules, which they willingly consume, killing them both. He inherits control of the steelworks, and the Essenbeck empire thereby comes under Nazi control.