Gina is the daughter of a provincial newsstand dealer and spends her time reading pulp magazines and dreaming of a glamorous vocation on the big city. She enters a beauty contest in a nearby city, without her father's permission, and, en route, meets Franco, a salesman.

Hercules decides to avenge the death of his wife, murdered at the hands of Éurito, king of Ecalia, but everything is a plot of an ambitious courtier. Hercules ends up falling in love with Deyanira, who is now a good queen.

The castle of the counts of Ventimiglia is conquered by the spanish Van Gould, who kills the count and sends his three sons in the Antilles. The ship is attacked by pirates and the three brothers are liberated. They decide to join the pirates to have revenge on Van Gould, who has also moved to the Antilles on the command of the viceroy.

Ugo meets the 18-year-old Renata in the hostel where she is staying. He falls in love with and leaves with her for several romantic places until the money ends. Ugo will try to get the girl engaged on a local TV station, but Renata falls in love with a manager.

A number of different segments taken from 19th century Italian stories.

Collected at the age of two, under extreme conditions, by a company of Gypsies, Jolly grew up among them, together with the man who accompanied her.

In Genoa, amongst the underclass living on the fringes of the law, Machedi organises the trafficking of women, to be exploited and sent off to who knows where. One of these women is Alda, who has evaded the ring once, but when her boyfriend is arrested, finds herself back in Machedi's net.

A sailor's girlfriend is courted by the same man who also seduced his sister.

The trials and tribulations of a group of artist friends and a gay gallery owner living in the Via Margutta neighbourhood of Rome. Stefano is a talented painter, devoted to his art but not interested in promoting himself, while many of his fellow artists are far more adept at selling their persona than creating art.

Vincenzo, a railwayman who works on the Rome-to-Paris line, has a wife in Italy and a mistress in France: Ginette, a widow with a four-year-old daughter. When he's offered a job in Paris he decides to move, but unfortunately his wife and petulant brother-in-law insist on accompanying him to Paris, and he must decide between the two women in his life.

Liana, an architecture graduate, is about to get married until she is confronted with the fact she is sacrificing the rest of her life for a man she barely knows. So begins a series of romantic encounters in which Liana tries to find her freedom and happiness, but which will ultimately lead her to a tragic fate.

March 1945: an air raid destroys a fishing village. The homeless are hosted by Brother Angelo in the convent of San Fruttuoso in Camogli: years pass but the houses are not rebuilt and when the prior dies, the convent is sold to the rich engineer Milone, determined to transform it into a holiday complex. To prevent the homeless from ending up on the streets, Brother Angelo devises every possible expedient, even a fake miracle while waiting for San Fruttuoso to perform a real one.

A man embezzles some money in order to pay his debts and the daughter of his boss, who is in love with his son, asks a rich former suitor of hers for help. When the rich man is found murdered the girl is accused of the crime. Will she be able to clear her name?

Barbara Florian is in love with Renalto Baldini. After the latter goes off to a distant job to make enough money to marry her, the girl discovers she is going to have a baby. Marco (Otello Toso), posing as a friend, exploits the situation to his own gain, and uses the situation to shock the girl's ailing father to his death. Marco then marries the widow, Valeria (Franca Marzi), the girl's stepmother.