Farley Granger

Two thrill-seeking friends strangle a classmate and then hold a party for their victim's family and friends, serving refreshments on a buffet table fashioned from a trunk containing the lifeless body. When dinner conversation revolves around talk of "the perfect murder," their former teacher becomes increasingly suspicious that his proteges have turned his intellectual theories into brutal reality.

In Venice, during the spring of 1866, it is the last month of the Austrian occupation of the Veneto. The Italian government has forged a pact with Prussia, and another war of liberation in the ongoing Risorgimento is imminent. Countess Livia Serpieri, unloved by her collaborator-husband but sympathetic to the cause of freedom espoused by her patriotic cousin Roberto, meets Austrian officer Franz Mahler as she begs him to call off a duel with Roberto....