Egisto Olivieri

Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò, enters an orphanage. Totò leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. But when greedy developers threaten the community’s land, Totò will need all the help he can get in order to find an impossible way out.

A neorealist tribute to the Italian resistance fighters of World War II.

Anna, a woman with a troubled past, marries an honest worker at the SIMA mechanical workshop, who provides her with a decent life despite financial difficulties. Blackmailed by a man who knows about her past, Anna loses her mind and kills him. Sentenced to ten years in prison, she dies in childbirth while giving birth to a baby girl.

The young Chiaretta has joined, against the will of her family, a theater company in the magazine in the hope of being able to sing on the stage. Her fiancé chases her trying to make her change her mind and bring her home.

Seduced by count Diego and then abandoned, Adriana finds a job at a large hairdresser shop, so she can lead a dignified life together with her daughter.

The film is set in Naples. Two doubles, an American and a Neapolitan, alternate visiting Zaza, the maid of a magazine company, deceived by their resemblance.

Successful WWI pilot Luciano Serra has problems adjusting to an ordinary life in peace, so he leaves his family and becomes a pilot in America. In the 30s, his son in Italy wants also to become a pilot, and Luciano accepts an offer of a double dealing agent for a flight from Rio to Rome, but his plane crashes in the Atlantic. For the world Luciano Serra is missing, but he has entered the Italian army under a new name to fight in Ethiopia. The train in which his unit travels is attacked by Ethiopian soldiers, his son flying a reconasaince mission is shot down and wounded by the same attacking enemies. Will Luciano be able to fly the plane back, to get close air support for the outnumbered Italian troups?