The film consists of six short stories created by different directors, but all the stories share one thing: a warm irony to current events.

Francesco, Sergio, and Antonio, three young men in a small, poverty-stricken village, lead uneventful lives. As all three are unemployed, they pass time roaming the streets and chasing girls. One day, Antonio's aunt asks him to stay with her and his cousins in Rome. He accepts and enrolls at a university, leaving his two friends behind to envy him for his new upscale lifestyle. But eventually Antonio returns, initially just for a day. Though he boasts about his life, he never returns to Rome and instead opts for his friends and the place he grew up, despite all its shortcomings.

Marta works as a telephone operator for a telephone company. She lives with her friend Nanda in Nanda's flat. But Nanda's priority is above anything else to find a husband.

Jose Desmet, a butler, killed his employer because the latter, once a district judge, had long ago condemned Desmet's father, a well known gangster, to death. When Desmet tries to seduce Salazar's daughter, who is heir to a goldmine, kills a woman and the village doctor because they had found out that he was selling weapons to the Indians, a government investigator, Bill Walcome, together with the sheriff, sets out to put an end to Desmet's activities.

A sheriff is killed by the leader of the local bad guys, and the father of the sheriff is not to pleased. The father, Mr. Piluk, is the local undertaker and also plays a mean violin when he is in a bad mood.