Aging small-time conman Augusto works with two younger men: Roberto, who desires to become the Italian Johnny Ray, and Bruno, nicknamed Picasso. Through a series of mishaps and personal entanglements, things go badly for Augusto.
Mario is in Hannover to work as a miner but after losing his job he decides to go back to Italy. When Totonno steals his passport to avoid the police and later on he offers him a new job as "magliaro" (cloth seller), Mario changes his mind and decides to follow Totonno to Hamburg. In Hamburg, Totonno and his friends have to sell Mayer's cloth, but they meet with the hostility of a Polish gang and Mario falls in love with Paula Mayer.
Widowed shopkeeper Cesira and her 13-year-old daughter Rosetta flee from the allied bombs in Rome during the second World War; they travel to the remote village where Cesira was born. During their journey and in the village and onward, the mother does everything she can to protect Rosetta. Meanwhile, a sensitive young intellectual, Michele, falls in love with Cesira.
Luciano, who studies at the university, falls in love with Sandra, a high school student, who returns his love. If her family is very rich, his family is of modest extraction; however, the difference in condition does not seem to be a problem, and Luciano's degree increases the hope of a happy future. However, following a sudden financial collapse, Sandra's family business failed: so, to help her parents, the girl accepted the kindness of a very rich childhood friend, deciding to marry him.
Summer, 1943: wealthy youth in the Riccione district of Rimini play while the war gets closer. Carlo Caremoli, a young man who follows the crowd, has found ways to avoid military service. Then, on the beach, he meets Roberta, a war widow with a child. Roberta's mother warns Roberta to avoid Carlo, but to her, he seems attentive and to her daughter he is kind. Romance develops. Within a few weeks, Roberta is risking everything. Can there be a resolution between passion, on the one hand, and war, duty, and social expectation on the other?
Dante Trilli, who has been teaching in his village school for about twenty years, wins a competition for Milan. Waiting for him is his childhood friend, where he is the janitor in the school where Trilli will teach.
Stylish, sophisticated and absolutely broke, Dino and Maria pursue a romance until they realize neither of them has any money, which forces the gold diggers to turn their attention to a wealthy widower and his daughter. A compulsive gambler who owes several anxious investors a small fortune, Dino has trouble cutting his losses, no matter how bad the losing streak.
This deceptively simple tale of a bored English couple travelling to Italy to find a buyer for a house inherited from an uncle is transformed by Roberto Rossellini into a passionate story of cruelty and cynicism as their marriage disintegrates around them.
A trilogy of stories of well-off youths who commit murders. In the French episode, a group of high school students kill one of their colleagues for his money. In the Italian episode, a university student's involved in smuggling cigarettes. In the English episode, a lazy poet finds the body of a woman on the downs, and tries to sell his story to the press.
The death of a wealthy patriarch in 1885 sets off an interfamily power struggle. Son Ferdinando buys out his other relatives in order to gain full control over the dead man's property. But Ferdinando's nephew Amerigo holds out. Amerigo's stance is weakened when he heads for Florence and meets prostitute Bianca.
Lot leads his people to a fertile valley adjacent to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, hotbeds of vice and corruption ruled by the merciless Queen Bera. When Lot orders a dam to be busted in order to prevent the destruction of the cities by the attacking Helamites, the queen, in gratitude, allows Lot's people to settle in Sodom. Soon, however, the veneer of civilization begins crumbling as Lot and the Hebrews become corrupted by the Sodomites.
André is a loving and attentive husband, but when he agrees to plead his enamored brother's case with student Françoise Massard, he in turn becomes infatuated with the beautiful woman, who is perpetually in search of true love through a series of hazardous romantic relationships. When Françoise learns that the legitimate couple are expecting a child.
Lorenzo, who's 16 and born to a wealthy family in Parma, tries to make things right toward a showgirl, Aida, whom his older brother has mistreated. In extending kindness and standing up for her, he comes of age. But, is there anything he can do that will alter Aida's situation or her prospects?
Salvatore and Romolo are two young and poor young men that are neighbours and friends. They live with their parents in Piazza Navona, Rome. They are poor but handsome, and both fall in love with Giovanna.
The usual gang of robbers are hired by a thief from Milan to steal a suitcase full of money, but troubles will hinder the success of the operation.
Twin brothers were raised by wolves, revolt against tyranny in pre-Roman Italy and then come to a parting of the ways as they lead their people toward the founding of a new city, the founders of Rome.
The umpteenth adaptation of Dumas' novel finds d'Artagnan and his friends promoting the love affairs of Anne of Austria and the Duke of Buckingham, incurring the wrath of the Cardinal and exposing themselves to the cold cruelty of Milady de Winter. Also featured are the tender Mme Bonacieux, the hilarious Planchet, the Queen's ferrets and Bethune's executioner, against a backdrop of clanging swords.
Gerardo, an aspiring actor, trying unsuccessfully to cross over from comedy to tragedy, is involved, due to his ability to mimic dialects of Italy, in a scam concocted by Lallo against a rich cloth-merchant.
The story of "King Lazzarone" Ferdinand I of Bourbon whose pastime was to neglect the government and disguise himself as a poor man and turn to the infamous city premises in search of love adventures. With the De Filippo brothers to complete.
A dying German magnate invites his youngest son and daughter-in-law home to discuss the future of the family's shipbuilding empire. There, the daughter-in-law stumbles upon a secret of the family's Nazi past.