THE SECRET OF NIKOLA TESLA (1980)

Life and times of Serbian-American Nikola Tesla, famous scientist whose inventions were stolen, but whose greatest contribution to mankind remain a mystery to this day.
Tesla arrives in the US in the 1880s. He tries to convince his new employer, Thomas Edison, to adopt his newly invented electric induction motor running on an alternating current (AC) system but Edison claims direct current (DC) is better and turns him down. Robert Underwood Johnson and his wife Katharine, who were at the meeting, later find Tesla digging a ditch, having quit his job at Edison. Tesla strikes a business deal with two investors to finance development of his motor. He shows off his AC system at meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers but Edison, in the audience, claims it is impractical. After the reporters, and even Tesla's own investors, turn away from him George Westinghouse convinces Tesla to sell him his AC patents and offers a contract to pay Tesla a royalty on his motor design. They end up in a public battle trying to demonstrate the their system is not unsafe (as Edison claims) and is actually better than DC. J.P. Morgan, pulling the strings in the background, calls Tesla and Edison into a meeting and, unhappy with Edison's progress electrifying his factories, tells Tesla he can try to prove AC would work better.
At a banquet celebrating the building of an alternating current power plant at Niagara Falls Tesla confuses the audience with his futuristic ideas about his high frequency wireless AC transmission system and then tells someone he is off to Europe to see his family (who he has been having flashbacks about). On that trip he visits his bed-ridden mother who dies in his arms. He then wanders out in the country side having flash backs about his childhood and the death of his brother, all punctuated by visions of falling water and lightning. Westinghouse and Katharine visit Tesla back at his New York lab where the inventor tears up his royalty contract to save Westinghouse from financial ruin. Tesla goes on to develop his wireless power system, making several reports to Morgan on his progress. Morgan tells Tesla he is unhappy with wild stories about the inventor but keeps backing him.
Westinghouse warns Tesla (who is now building his Morgan financed Wardenclyffe wireless power station) to watch out for Morgan's motives and Katharine tells the inventor how she wished they could have had more of a relationship together. Tesla learns from Morgan that Guglielmo Marconi has stolen his wireless patents and that Albert Einstein has new theories about matter and energy. Tesla tells Morgan these new theories are a "crime against nature" and tries to get Morgan to back his free wireless power system before it is too late. After Tesla leaves Morgan says he won't back a system that would put him out of business and orders all further interaction with Tesla cut off. Tesla looks over his demolished Wardenclyffe station and complains, at the end of his life in a world choked with smog, that he wished Morgan had listened to him.