In a village of the Po valley where the earth is hard and life miserly, the priest and the communist mayor are always fighting to be the head of the community. If in secret, they admired and liked each other, politics still divided them as it is dividing the country. And when the mayor wants his "People's House"; the priest wants his "Garden City" for the poor. Division exist between the richest and the poorest, the pious and the atheists and even between lovers. But if the people are hard as the country, they are good in the bottom of there heart.

A family man travelling for work, Paolo Bianchi, meets on a train a lonely girl, Maria. He sees her again on a bus and she reveals him that she's in troubles: she's pregnant, her baby's father has left her and she doesn't know how to tell to her parents that she's not married. She asks Paolo to play the role of her husband and he accepts....

Saturnino Farandola: Raised by monkeys, taken in by sailors, captain of a frigate. He sets off to chart unknown worlds with his loyal crew. Beneath the sea he encounters love in the person of Mysora the beautiful. On land he comes up against a mad wise man, a Machiavellian mandarin and bloodthirsty Apaches, but nothing will be able to stop his desire to explore.

Hoping to please her, some children give their grandmother an electric lamp for her birthday, but the elderly lady does not intend to put the old oil lamp in the attic and tells the young people that the object has a huge value for her.