Fontamara is a village in the Marsica, forgotten by all but God and its inhabitants are called 'cafoni' (boors). Berardo Viola wants to marry Elvira but only after gaining enough money to buy some land and in order to reach his aim he has the idea of going to a great city. When Maria Grazia is raped by the fascists, Berardo and Antonio decide to leave Fontamara and go to Rome. Here they are swindled by a lawyer and afterwards they are invited by an antifascist to a restaurant where they are arrested by the police because of some subversive papers they had.

Federico is a child-killer running from the law. Wounded, he is taken in by an 11 year old girl named Simona. Their strange love affair is interrupted by Simona's depressed, oversexed mother Vera, who concocts a plan with Federico to kill her wheelchair-bound, reclusive husband. Simona does not take kindly to this new relationship between Federico and Vera.

A quartet of young neo-Fascists terrorise the Milanise locals while the Police mostly look the other way.