Once upon a time an old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Toto, enters an orphanage. Toto 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. The squatters discover oil in the land and Toto sees a vision of the old woman who gives him a magic dove that will grant him anything he wishes.

In Milan, the beggar Carlone has formed a brotherhood. Carlone's sister Anna, is a poor blind girl. One day Carlone saves a mutilated, who tried to end his days.

Two little angels, a boy and a girl, come down on earth to choose their parents prior to birth. They choose the daughter of a retired general as their future mother and an opera singer as their dad. But making the two chosen ones meet, fall in love and marry will prove to be anything but easy.

To secure her fortune with Monsieur Vaudieu de la Tour, the Machiavellian Claudia kills her lover's elder brother and steals his child. The boy is adopted by a coachman, and later, as secretary to the Minister of Justice, discovers the truth, punishes the bad guys, rewards the good ones and marries the daughter of another innocent man, unjustly accused by Claudia.

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.

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

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.

In 1893, on an island in the Strait of Sicily, a woman is beginning to go crazy due to an officer that she loved leaving. When she believes a newly arrived official to be the man that left her, he plays along.

Venice Film Festival 1942

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?

A plantation owner's daughter falls in love with the handsome plantation foreman Andrea, but her father disapproves of the relationship. Andrea is fired, and he runs away with a native girl. To make sure that he will not leave her, the black girl gives him a "magic" potion... turning Andrea into her white slave.