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During a tragic suicide pact in Mayerling, Crown Prince Rudolf is thought to have killed his girlfriend and himself in 1882, killing both of them at the same time. Emperors may not be able to tell the whole story because they hide things from the public. In 1935, this story was made into a movie in French. In 1968, it was made into a movie in English. Miklos Jancso, a Hungarian film director, recreates those events for his own purposes, and he keeps up with his favorite theme of people not obeying their parents. Good-hearted Rudolf is a golden boy who has sex with both men and women on his rural estate in the movie, which has very little dialogue. He doesn't want to leave his country idyll even though the Emperor, his father, has told him to. Despite the fact that for a large part of the movie, attractive young people are naked and having sexy encounters, the movie's mood is one of melancholy rather than lust.