Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.
In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I shall destroy you." Martin denies being a vampire and implies that Cuda is merely his uncle rather than his cousin. Cuda then puts up strings of garlic on the doors to his and his granddaughter's room, and then holds up a small cross when Martin approaches him. Martin takes away the cross, and even takes a bite of the garlic mocking these attempts by saying bitterly, "There's no real magic... ever". Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases. But he also warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock. He also tells Martin to stay away from his granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest), whom arrives home from her job that evening.
Cuda introduces Christine to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christine instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christine, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues. Christine is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christine's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's attempt at a conversation. Christine later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.
When Christine sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatingly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.
Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store of stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken in with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed when she tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her, so she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.
One day, Martin travels by train to outside Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband (Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and breaks in through the garage door. But it is Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into her bedroom to find her in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles with narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a clump of trees across the street where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live.
Martin begins to have romantic monochrome visions of his vampire past (real or imagined), where he drained blood from a young woman and was chased through the streets of a nameless European town by a torch-lit mob.
During one Sunday at church, Cuda brings home Father Howard (George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemans (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemans confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country of people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and he flees them. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well. A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire.
One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Mrs. Santini during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having sex for the first time, Mrs. Santini becomes more depressed for she tells Martin that her husband just left her because she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards him are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.
Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda and tells him that he wants Christine to leave town with him so they can get married and start a family. But Christine becomes angry at Cuda when he tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. Shortly afterwards, Christine packs up and leaves Braddock for New York with Arthur despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christine tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christine's life, she probably won't.
Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts in a alley, injecting them with narcotics. He kills one of them by silting the bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin is about to kill the second one when a police car shows up and gives chase. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the garbage strew streets and through a local store. Martin runs into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and the three thugs begins where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who casually walks away from the carnage.
One day, Martin finds Mrs. Santini dead in her bathtub, after she had slit her writs with a razor blade. Martin anonymously calls the police to report the body and leaves. He phones the radio show host one final time to say that he really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person. But when Cuda learns about Mrs. Santini's suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.
Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".
m2259：他成为了别人的小说。卡洛琳是个好女人。
今年真的是看了太多better stay as fiction的电影了。
人生本绵长，点点欢喜多是伤。
虽然但是短评里某位，《交际花盛大衰记》是什么鬼，《交际花盛衰记》、《交际花荣枯记》甚至直译《交际花的辉煌与苦难》也行，巴尔扎克看了盛大衰记这个新名字不晓得会不会痛哭流涕。《幻灭》本来就不是个人成长型故事，巴写《幻灭》虽然有短评里所说的意图，但本意也是鞭策自己，巴明明用更多得多的篇幅去揭露新闻界、文艺界的腐化怪相，说第二部是巴黎社会生活横断面也不为过，考虑到时长问题，导演以此为侧重点无可厚非，但删掉小团体我持保留意见。ps:裸戏确实辣眼睛，我不懂有什么存在的意义。（我坚持认为《幻灭》的体量不该拍电影，66版的迷你剧就很不错
等到揭露大前提，就必须要面对这个创作本身的问题。不过整体上对老式西部故事的气质把控还是挺不错的。
泛滥的旁白损害了整部片子的气质，导演明显缺乏用影像叙事的能力。巴尔扎克的原著应该更厉害，把整个泡沫社会以及其中异化的人尽数尸解。
真好看。起这个名字真恰当啊。我们拥有过幻梦一样的快乐，财富和地位，最终却依旧变得一无所有，长了一张初恋般脸庞的女孩去世了，最初的坚持也破灭了，好像一切都变得很干净，如我们来到这世界的第一天。
我觉得很久没看到扎扎实实拍好名著的电影了，当然一部分也是归功于巴尔扎克的剧本
当时的法国社会是分层的，年轻人有光明而无前途，悲剧收场
轻松杀了一众枪手后，被一个脖子中了一枪的人，打中两枪。。。
4.5 人间喜剧改编的电影非常对胃口，影像化的后小说文本节奏改得很好
多少个这样的心灵，
并没有看过原著，还是鼓起勇气来把这部两个半小时的片子看完了。完全不闷，比想象的好看。讲的是一个年轻的外省诗人随贵妇情人进入巴黎、被丢下于是转行做小报记者、借助各路朋友敌人摸爬滚打逐渐声名鹊起、企图重新获得贵族头衔最终彻底幻灭的经历。复辟时期的巴黎这个宏大的历史画卷表现得非常迷人：剧院、报纸、出版人、富商、贵族、王室之间的各种勾当，寥寥几个场景就展现地一清二楚。对话非常辛辣（应该是巴尔扎克的功劳）让人印象深刻。此外导演应该是有意加了一些指射当下的元素吸引观众。
亮点全在原著文本和旁白了——因而我只觉得巴尔扎克好厉害，却并无导演什么事。
Lucien本来要讽刺一本书，然而在他看完书后，说"我无法诋毁这本书，它有着力量，感情...文章inspired，sincere，never conventional."
男主画上烟熏妆那个镜头我真的一个爆笑，导演感觉没有太多想象力，电影本身中规中矩，旁白过多甚至有偷懒的嫌疑，无奈巴尔扎克的故事太过扎实，两个半小时丝毫不觉冗长。有机会补个原著。
一个有才华充满理想的青年偶遇现实，名气、性、金钱以及来自乡下人特有的自卑，巴黎敞开着，此在沉沦着，梳起头发，对着镜子整理领口，涂起眼线，流连于谎言与背叛，性与毒品，香槟、沙龙、戏剧，侯爵夫人、烟雾缭绕的巴黎，以及塞纳河底。
女孩倒下的时候我的心跟着一起碎了 巴尔扎克写得好
在巴尔札克的人间喜剧里，政治、感情、名气、灵魂... 万事也皆可买卖，每名 记者都变成了大作家。Lucien尝试爱，尝试挣扎，尝试在一切幻象中求存
有文化的人吵架形容对方微不足道会说like a breeze… 主要还是巴尔扎克写得好，但是也没有必要加旁白加得那么多，电影完全沦为书的附属，比起同样是名著改编的《纯真年代》差了点克制
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