克里斯汀（罗密·施奈德 Romy Schneider 饰）的父亲是一位有名的音乐家，她自幼生长在充满了艺术氛围的家庭之中，个性奔放而又向往着自由。成年后，在父亲的安排下，克里斯汀和一名男子结下了婚约，但之后，她邂逅了名为弗朗茨（阿兰·德龙 Alain Delon 饰）的年轻军官，啥时间，两人疯狂的坠入了情网。为了能够和弗朗茨在一起，克里斯汀甚至背信弃义，解除了婚约。　　谁知道，风流的弗朗茨曾经和男爵夫人（米谢琳·普雷斯勒 Micheline Presle 饰）有过一段桃色的往事，虽然这段情事早已经成为了历史，但还是被男爵知道了。愤怒的男爵找到了弗朗茨，要同他进行决斗。

Paris, 1315. The Tour de Nesle, a guard tower on the banks of the Seine, has become a symbol of mystery and fear. Each morning, at its base, the bodies of handsome young aristocrats are found floating in the river, all butchered by sword or arrow. One evening, two noblemen, Buridan and Philippe d'Aulnay, find themselves in the infamous tower, lured there on the expectation of a night of unbridled passion. Little do they realise that they are to be the next victims of a woman who is determined to take revenge against all men - Margaret of Burgundy, the present Queen of France. Although Philippe is killed, Buridan escapes, and intends to blackmail the Queen. Unless she makes him her prime minister, he will expose her crimes to Philippe's brother and her husband, King Louis X. When she moves to eliminate Burdan, Margaret makes a terrible discovery...　　In the twilight years of his long and pretty uneven career, the great avant-garde film director Abel Gance made a number of films which, whilst not as grand and artistically inspired as his early silent masterpieces (La Roue (1923), Napoléon (1927)), still compared very favourably with the work of his contemporaries.　　Of these, La Tour de Nesle is a film that still stands up remarkably well today - an ambitious historical drama based on the famous 1832 play by Alexandre Dumas. It makes a nice companion piece to Gance's subsequent historical romp, Cyrano et d'Artagnan (1964).　　　　Needless to say, the film isn't to be commended on its historical accuracy. As any historian will tell you, the Alexandre Dumas version of French history is wildly fanciful, to say the least. However, this doesn't prevent La Tour de Nesle from being an entertaining and, at times, highly poignant, piece of cinema.　　Whilst the characterisation and dialogue leave much to be desired, the plot (a murky tale of cruel revenge and political intrigue) is gripping, and the film's artistic design is exceptional for a film of this period. Gance brings a strangely expressionistic touch to his use of colour and shade, something which adds to the darkly sinister nature of the plot, whilst imbuing the film with a striking sense of historical realism. A propos, Gance's assistant director Nelly Kaplan makes her screen début in a small role, shortly before she herself embarked on a successful film making career.