Leonilde Montesi

A middle-aged man meets a young woman who is waiting on a canal bridge for her lover's return.

Directed by the incredibly prolific Mario Camerini, Suor Letizia was released in English-speaking regions as When Angels Don't Fly and The Awakening. In her first film appearance since The Rose Tattoo, Anna Magnani plays a feisty nun named Sister Letizia. Believing herself above such earthly trivialities as a maternal instinct, Sr. Letizia changes her way of thinking when an abandoned child is placed in her care. Unofficially adopting the boy, the good sister eventually comes to realize that even she cannot provide the care and guidance of a biological mother. Carefully constructed to accommodate all the surefire box-office elements inherent in Camerini's earlier films, Suor Letizia was almost guaranteed to be a hit.

Paolo, a youth, associates with very dubious characters and shirks work but all in all he is a good guy. Will he mend his own ways?

As he does every year, Severino, a young hawker who goes around the festivals of the various villages in the Po Delta, returns to Migliarino to sell his knick-knacks and tell far-fetched stories about the future and progress. Besides the beautiful Marina, three gullible old friends live here, pensioners who live off poverty, to whom he proposes the sale of a hectare of sky.