It is the award-winning penultimate film of the great Luchino Visconti. An elderly professor – an esthete and a passionate collector of art and music, lives in an old palazzo. He has long been thought to himself that it is better to think of the perfect creation of the people than of the people themselves – suffering, restless, and imperfect ones. One of the professor’s hobbies is family portraits in the interior – a genre called the English Conversation Piece which is represented on the canvas. And these "conversation pieces" satisfy the professor. He does not need other conversations. And suddenly, the professor’s metronome life is suddenly violated by the guests whom he was forced to provide the upper floor of his palazzo – Marquise Brumonti with a young gigolo Conrad and her daughter with her fiance Stefano Letta. There are characters for the Conversation Piece. But the professor does not have view this "conversation piece" through the lens. He will have to become a part of it.