Leo is a street vendor who, always accompanied by his dog Cagliostro, he entertains shoppers on the beach telling stories more or less agreeable to a group of guys who are really too busy to look for adventures chasing the tourists. Meanwhile Mario, a boy on vacation with his father, falls in love with his beautiful cello teacher but this, of course, prefers the father.

Four episodes set on the beaches of Rimini: a womanizer pretends to be homosexual in order to gain the favors of a beautiful woman who ignores him. A mature beachgoer suffers from indigestion. A businessman unknowingly finances his wife's infidelities. Two wives from the south are forced to exchange partners.

The lives of three generations of peasant farmers in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy are the focus of this unexciting, flat-footed saga by Florestano Vancini. When the grandfather (Marne Maitland) first decides to leave his job of canal-building and move to northern Italy, he takes up work as a peasant on the land of a local priest, while his oldest son Venancio (Massimo Ghini) starts driving a carriage. More of a visionary than a chauffeur, Venancio first gets involved in organizing the peasants into a kind of farmer's union, and when that movement goes under, he devotes himself to educating the farmers instead. Along the way, his mother dies, he marries Mariena (Anna Teresa Rossini), and they have children. Much to Venancio's sorrow, his own sons do not want to stay in farming, and as they grow older, only one remains at home to till the soil. In the meantime, the specter of fascism is growing stronger by the day and the clouds of war being to darken the horizon.