***SPOILERS*** Desperate to obtain a government contract to keep him from going into bankruptcy Walter Nicholson, Barry Sullivan, goes so far as to set up and then blackmail the US Government official Jim Hawley, Jack Ging, in order to get it. Getting freelance film maker Sam, Ralph Thomas, to secretly film what's happening in Jim's hotel room Walter plans to get him on film in a compromising position with this hooker Carrie Lane, Jacike DeShannon, that he picked up at a local ginmill and use the evidence as leverage to get the government contract.
As the film or camera is rolling through a two way mirror in the adjacent hotel room Walter himself pops in to see how things are going and in his excitement in getting the goods on Jim gets himself sloppy drunk in the process! The next morning Walter back at his office and sobering up from the night before has Sam pay him a visit with the developed film footage of the night before! In him gleefully watching the film Walter is in for a number of surprises that he never expected. Sure Jim isn't the squeaky clean boy scout and family man that he makes himself out to be he's anything but! But the woman that he's cheating on his wife Virginia, Nancy Maloner, isn't the floozy blond hooker, Carrie Lane, that Walter set him up with but his own wife Barbara, Joan Blackman!
We get to see in the film "Itimacy" a man self destruct before our very eyes as he finds out that his wife in not only having an affair with the man he plans to blackmail but also exposing himself, on film, as a man too drunk and irresponsible to be given the government contract that he trying to get. Watching the movie within a movie that takes almost the entire length of the film has a shocked Walter, in what he sees, start to hit the bottle and pop pills that before the film is over he's out cold on the floor and clinging to life.
***SPOILERS*** Barbara who rushes to Walter's office when she couldn't get in touch with him, to tell him the bad news that she's leaving him, finds Walter dead from a heart attack with the film still rolling! It's the last few minutes of the film that it's Barbara who gets the surprise of her life in that her secret lover Jim is seen going back to his wife Virginia as well as agreeing to give Walter the government contract that he wanted! Which in him being dead and now not really needing it wouldn't help him anyway! That's in Jim feeling guilty in him having an affair with Walter's wife Barbara behind his, as well as his wife's Virgnia's, back!
