The film is about an unemployed banker, Henri Verdoux, and his sociopathic methods of attaining income. While being both loyal and competent in his work, Verdoux has been laid-off. To make money for his wife and child, he marries wealthy widows and then murders them. His crime spree eventually works against him when two particular widows break his normal routine.
On trial for murdering his girlfriend, philandering stockbroker Larry Ballentine takes the stand to claim his innocence and describe the actual, but improbable sounding, sequence of events that led to her death.
A down-to-earth pilot charms a European princess on vacation in the United States.
Aircraft factory worker Barry Kane flees across the United States after he is wrongly accused of starting the fire that killed his best friend.
Circumstance, an old flame and a mother-in-law drive a happily married couple to the verge of divorce and insanity.