An off-screen Italian television camera crew (voice enacted by Fellini) conducts documentarian-style 'roving eye' interviews with musicians preparing for a low-budget rehearsal in a run-down auditorium (formerly converted from a 13th-century church — presently slated for demolition, apparently). Speaking candidly and often cynically about their craft, interviewees are seen routinely interrupting one another as their artistic claims are contested or derided by orchestral peers, each self-importantly regarding his own instrument as the most vital to group performance, the most solitary in nature or spiritual in relation — these varied opinions reflecting each listener's intensely personal experience with music, one of the recurring themes of the film. The conductor arrives (speaking Italian but with an affected German accent), proving theatrically critical of the ensuing performance quality and equally quarrelsome with trade union representatives on site, wearing down the orchestra members as he commands them to play with exceedingly particular nuances bordering on absurd abstraction, leading several musicians to strip away clothing under the strain of this taxing effort.Protesting the conductor's authoritarian abuses, the union reps intervene, spitefully announcing that all musicians will be taking a 20-minute double break. While one camera follows the players to a local tavern to further catalog their ideological musings, in a backstage interview the defeated conductor expresses his frustrations regarding the impossible contradictions of his leadership role, opining on the subjective power of music just as a power outage in the building prompts his return to the auditorium hall. There he discovers the darkened auditorium space has been thoroughly defaced with spray-painted revolutionary slogans and rubbish being flung about by the musicians who chant a discordant chorus of protest against their oppressive taskmaster and then against music itself ("The music in power, not the power of music!"). This increasingly anarchistic bacchanal culminates in a violent crescendo of gunshots and in-fighting, until finally an impossibly large wrecking ball — its presence going unexplained — smashes with God-like wrath through a wall of the building (at the altar of this former church), causing the death of the harpist beneath an avalanche of rubble.As the silenced fellow musicians reflect on this tragedy in a cloud of settling dust, the conductor steps in to eulogize with a motivational speech declaring that music requires them to play through the pain of life, to find strength, identity and guidance in the fated notes of its composition. Amid the ruins, the newly inspired musicians accommodatingly take to their instruments to deliver a tour de force redemptive performance. At its conclusion, however, the conductor's former words of fleeting praise once again sour to perfectionist dissatisfaction, resuming his comically agitated critique at the dais as the picture fades to black, to the swelling accompaniment of a classical opus. As the credit roll commences, the conductor's continued Italian dialogue berating the orchestra is heard to slip into dictatorial German barking, suggesting a sharper political allegory at play in the movie's message all along.
マル戦計画の潜水艦小、第4911号艦型の39番艦、仮称艦名第4949号艦として計画。1945年8月1日、三菱重工業神戸造船所で仮称艦名第4948号艦、同第4950号艦と同時に起工。終戦時未成。17日、工事中止が発令され工程10%で工事中止。1946年4月から6月にかけて、三菱重工業神戸造船所で解体された。
群馬県碓氷郡西上磯部村（現安中市）、磯部温泉の温泉旅館・蓬莱館の家に生まれる。同県の安中中学校、高崎中学校、早稲田大学第三高等予科を経て、1907年9月、早稲田大学文学部英文科に入学。この頃より詩を発表しはじめた。1912年卒業。卒論は「私の象徴詩論」。卒業後しばらくは、詩作のほかこれといった仕事をせず、貧窮に甘んじていたが、1916年にライオン歯磨本舗に就職。以後、生涯をサラリーマンと詩人の二重生活に捧げた。学生時代以来の左耳難聴や頭痛に悩まされ、その後もさまざまな病気で通院、入院を繰り返すなど健康状態は概して良くなく、最後は神奈川県高座郡茅ヶ崎町（現・茅ヶ崎市）のサナトリウム・南湖院で結核によって亡くなった。戒名は大慈院英学拓善居士。生涯に書かれた詩作品は2400近くにのぼる。作品の発表を盛んに行っていたものの、生前に詩集が発刊されることはなかった。友人や詩壇とのつきあいに乏しく、生涯を独身で通したため、彼に関する偏見や誤解は、生前も死後も強かった。死後（1936年）に刊行された詩集『藍色の蟇』に寄せられた、北原白秋や萩原朔太郎の文章に見られる「亜麻色の捲毛に眼は碧い洋種の詩人」「仏蘭西語の書物以外に、日本語の本を殆ど読んで居ない」「永遠の童貞」などはその典型である。『藍色の蟇』に続き、1940年に詩画集『蛇の花嫁』、1941年に訳詩集『異国の香』、1943年に遺稿集『詩日記と手紙』が刊行され、また、1941年には北原白秋、萩原朔太郎、大木惇夫らによって「拓次の会」が発足するなど、彼への評価は決して低いものではなかったが、前述のような事情から彼を異端視する風潮も残り続ける。戦後、『大手拓次詩集』として刊行した出版社に、創元社、角川書店、弥生書房、思潮社、岩波書店がある。また、拓次の著作権を継承した櫻井作次（拓次の弟・櫻井秀男の息子）らの尽力により1970年から1971年にかけて白鳳社から全集（全5巻および別巻）が刊行された（500部限定）。全集の編者の1人である原子朗によると、全集には誤りが多く、新しい全集を企画しているという（岩波文庫版『大手拓次詩集』解説。2007年時点では出版されていない）。