The film opens following a murder at a cabaret in Mexico City in 1936; a shot is heard, but the body of the female victim (Connie) has been strangled.

The Great Flamarion (Erich von Stroheim) is an arrogant, friendless, and misogynous marksman who displays his trick gunshot act in the vaudeville circuit.

Flamarion falls in love with Connie, the movie's femme fatale, and is soon manipulated by her into killing her no good husband during one of their acts.

After Al's supposed accidental death, Connie convinces Flamarion to wait three months before the two can marry and flees back to Hibbing, Minnesota.

After she fails to show up at an arranged meeting place three months later, Flamarion goes into a downward spiral of drinking and gambling.