When elderly pensioner Umberto Domenico Ferrari returns to his boarding house from a protest calling for a hike in old-age pensions, his landlady demands her 15,000-lire rent by the end of the month or he and his small dog will be turned out onto the street. Unable to get the money in time, Umberto fakes illness to get sent to a hospital, giving his beloved dog to the landlady's pregnant and abandoned maid for temporary safekeeping.
In a village of the Po valley where the earth is hard and life miserly, the priest and the communist mayor are always fighting to be the head of the community. If in secret, they admired and liked each other, politics still divided them as it is dividing the country. And when the mayor wants his "People's House"; the priest wants his "Garden City" for the poor. Division exist between the richest and the poorest, the pious and the atheists and even between lovers. But if the people are hard as the country, they are good in the bottom of there heart.
In a massive department store the driver romances the shopgirl. The problem is that the manager also has his eye on her, and some employees seem to be pilfering goods from the place.
A singer and operetta dancer works in a small french town where the authorities want to expel her because of her scandalous conduct and performance. When a puritan judge closes the show, the woman will take revenge involving the judge in an affair before the selfsame Justice minister. From that moment on, a series of diversions and misunderstandings will play out leading the main characters to the city of Paris.
After ending up in jail, a thief in Naples with a beautiful fiance and a good friend has to decide which path his life should take.
Carlo Rutelli falls in love with the beautiful variety singer Yvonne la Nuit, but his father opposes the wedding. World War I breaks out and Carlo is killed while Yvonne has a son, but on orders from Carlo's father, she is told he is dead. Her career descends and only Nino, an art partner, remains close to her and helps her earn her living by singing in taverns.
A married woman hits a pedestrian with her car who requests that she must perform a particular punishment as a penance.
After an argument with her husband, an unsatisfied wife suffers from selective amnesia. She doesn't recognize the man she married and calls her doctor husband instead.
A comedy about an unemployed fellow who goes to live with his brother and runs into trouble with his brother's overbearing wife.
When "Tamara" throws herself from the window of their brothel, her colleagues are made to realise that a new law will close down the source of their livelihood. The girls must now find honest work.
A fashion designer rents his villa to a woman before leaving to go abroad. The daughter of the woman is forced to pretend to be handicapped in a dark conspiracy aimed to prevent the man from leaving.
A young man with no solid income is rejected by a wealthy industrialist when he dares to ask for his daughter's hand. After 20 yeas he has become a wealthy financier in America; he returns to his homeland and starts to track down the girl of his dreams.
The story is told through the eyes of a boy, how he wanders between reality and dream. His daily life is transformed to a surreal world through the unique sensitivity of boyhood.
