An unsuspecting student thinks that the wife of an arms dealer is unhappy, but in reality she appears as cynical as her capitalist man.

It is in the late 1930s, and Cesare Pavese, a writer, with two of his friends meets a very uninhibited noble couple.

The youth protest against corruption in Italian politics. When they subsequently find themselves in trouble, they take the law into their own hands: they form the Red Brigade, which wreaks death and destruction.