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 French fugitive arrives in Genoa, where he becomes entangled with an Italian woman and her daughter.
Burgundy 1728. Old count Antoine d'Eon is overjoyed. His daughter-in-law has finally given birth to a boy and he will at long last be able to transmit his inheritance to his son Pascal. At least this is what he thinks, for Pascal has concealed from his father the fact that his son was ... a daughter, his eighth daughter! Well, enough is enough and Geneviève has no other choice but become a boy first, then a soldier and even the special envoy of Louis XV, King of France, to Catherine II, the Czarina of Russia.
Lyria, a faded beauty who runs a seedy waterfront bar, is madly in love with Bob, a crooked attorney. Bob can't bring himself to confess his love for Minnie, the pretty daughter of Simon, a safe cracker. In order to run away with her, Bob, one of the masterminds of a big-time robbery, betrays his friends. But Lyria, who has found out what is happening, makes Minnie fall into a deadly trap.
Saracen pirates aboard the "Black Eagle" attack Christians strongholds along the coast of Spain. When they stop off in Sheba to re-supply, they also buy female slaves and end up fighting over them.
The small South American republic of Guadalarma is under the rule of despot Don Salvador, surrounded by a civil guard, his mistress (La Morenita), his henchman (Don Ramón) and the fortress governor (the venal Don Gaspar). One morning, the city's French jeweler Michel Dumartin receives a visit from a client named José Llanos, one of the regime's fiercest opponents. Llanos is soon denounced and shot dead by Salvador's men. At the same time, Dumartin was accused of complicity with the rebels. Arrested and imprisoned in the fortress, he is ripe for the death penalty.
Goubbiah is a Yugoslav sponge fisherman. He loves Trinida, but she is promised to Peppo, the village drunkard. Jao tries to keep Goubbiah away from his daughter.
Esterina, a young war orphan, joins two truck drivers, Gino and Piero, on their trips along Northern Italy. She wants to find her luck in the big city, but her dreams turn into disappointing experiences. She falls in love with Gino but he is not interested in her, until she disappears...
Valerio Rossello is a judge, with a rigid and uncompromising mentality. He is married to Lucia, a woman who instead follows the model of a loving and protective mother. From their union only one child was born: Maurizio. Both parents raise him completely differently, highlighting their character differences. Until the day when Maurizio, now a teenager, together with a friend commits an attack for futile reasons against a gas station attendant. Having learned of the incident, Valerio and Lucia also in this case intend to face the situation in a diametrically opposite way. The conflicts within the family thus strongly resurface, in which, amidst rebounds of responsibility, the errors of both parents emerge in the upbringing of their child.
