In 1938 Austria shortly after the Nazi occupation, a prominent Viennese intellectual, Werner von Basil, is arrested for smuggling art treasures out of the country, and imprisoned by the Gestapo in a hotel room - without any mental sustenance of any kind - to break him down and make him talk. A young ballerina named Irene Andreny, who is the lover of the SS officer Berger playing mind games on von Basil, tries to intervene and help the poor intellectual keep his mind intact.