A number of different segments taken from 19th century Italian stories.

After World War II, a woman refuses to believe her husband, missing on the Russian front, is dead. Flashbacks reveal their brief courtship and marriage. Years later, she travels to Russia with his photo, determined to find him. What will she discover?

A family man travelling for work, Paolo Bianchi, meets on a train a lonely girl, Maria. He sees her again on a bus and she reveals him that she's in troubles: she's pregnant, her baby's father has left her and she doesn't know how to tell to her parents that she's not married. She asks Paolo to play the role of her husband and he accepts....

Based on the Nikolai Gogol story but set in 1950s Italy, "The Overcoat" is the story of a poor city hall clerk whose only desire is to buy a new overcoat.

A Milanese shop assistant becomes an overnight film sensation when fate lands her the leading role in a prominent producer's romantic drama.

Sor Clemente escapes the surveillance of his wife and goes to attend a variety show.

In the Po Valley during the 19th century, a rich girl engaged to a well-to-do farmer ends up penniless and is forced to work for her fiancé’s relatives. Peasant unrest, carried to extremes by both workers and landowners, leads to violence and tragedy.

In the absence of the biological mother, too busy pursuing her theatrical career, we see the glorification of the maternal surrogate, a woman who is a paragon of sacrifice and self-abnegation. La Fuggitiva is also a film in which a child actress takes a prominent role. In this sentimental drama, the little girl suffers for and rebels against the loneliness and neglect stemming from the lack of a mother and a loving family setting.

An old woman finds a baby in her cabbage patch and raises him. After her death, the boy grows up in an orphanage and later joins the homeless in post-war Milan, helping them build a shanty town. When they discover oil, he receives a magical dove from a vision of his adoptive mother that grants wishes.

Primary school teacher Mr. Mombelli, nevertheless satisfied with his life, is driven by his wife to resign and starting a new activity. He invest all his goodwill setting up a footwear little factory.

Sicily, early 1900s. An impoverished prince settles into the house of a rich shipowner and becomes his counselor.

Franco, a young man of noble descent, marries Luisa, daughter of a humble clerk, against his grandmother's will.

A photographer named Corrado snaps a picture of Antonietta. When it shows up on the front page of a magazine, she wants to take him to court over it.

Forced to support herself, her children, her physically incapacitated husband and her obtrusive brother and mother, a downtrodden working woman contracts tuberculosis. She is granted a brief vacation at a health spa, where a whole new world — and potential new life — is opened up to her.

Maria, a prostitute, meets Cesare in a police station, a drunkard reporter. Cesare falls in love with her and wants to save her from her bleak life but the girl refuses any help.

An aging, down-and-out public employee must face the primary school examination.

A singer saves a heavy alcoholic journalist. Fate has a new meeting for them: the two are found in a police station where she was brought with the accusation of prostitution.