In 1895 the Vanderbilts opened their new summer house at Newport with a ball for three hundred guests, and supper was not served until one o’clock in the morning. Behind the diamonds and the cotillion, almost everyone in the house was working: footmen who had been up since six, laundresses facing a week of tablecloths, and a twenty year old heiress whose diary shows how closely she was being watched. Using the etiquette books, servant handbooks, newspapers and private letters of that summer, the film follows one week at The Breakers from the guest room, the servants’ hall and the bedroom of the girl the ball was for. Each floor had its own rules, and few people could have kept them for seven days.

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