Nick Nolte stars as Howard W. Campbell, Jr., an American who moves with his family to Germany after World War I and goes on to become a successful German-language playwright.

The film is narrated by Campbell, through a series of flashbacks, as he sits in a jail cell in Israel, writing his memoirs, and awaiting trial for war crimes.

The film also stars Sheryl Lee, John Goodman, Kirsten Dunst, Alan Arkin, and Frankie Faison.

Late in the war, after his wife, Helga, is reportedly killed on the Eastern Front, Campbell visits her family in early 1945 outside Berlin, just before the Red Army arrives.

In New York City, Campbell lives a lonely existence for fifteen years, sustained only by memories of Helga and an indifferent curiosity about his eventual fate.

Mrs. Epstein, a Holocaust survivor living in Campbell's building, is the only person who suspects his true identity; he seems to avoid her suspicions by feigning ignorance of German.

Roger Ebert wrote, "It is a tribute to Nolte's performance that while we are confused about the meaning of the story, we never doubt the presentation of his character."

[8] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune observed that the confused message is exacerbated by the outsize emphasis placed on the propagandist speeches delivered by the main character.

[9] Marjorie Baumgarten praised the film's ambition and other elements, but called the overall experience "disappointing": "Though disappointing, Mother Night is not without pleasures (high among these are the performances of Arkin, Goodman, and Henry Gibson as the voice of Adolph Eichmann, and the walk-on cameo of Vonnegut himself in a street scene); it just never finds a comfortable stride.