An honest bank clerk, Henry Verdoux (Charles Chaplin), was fired due to the economic crisis of the year 1930. To ensure the existence of his family, a wife Mona (Mady Correll) and a child (Alisson Roddan), he takes an unexpected decision and launches in an "adventure". He starts to get married to older women but full of money, whom he kills to inherit all their possessions. One day he meets a young woman who melts his heart with her story, and filled with remorse he takes the poisoned cup of wine from her hand and lets her survive. The police begins researching the missing dead women and is on his tracks. After many years Henry losses all his fortune, his wife and child and he alone has to choose his destiny.