After losing heavyweight contender Al Costa to mob boss Florini fight promoter Knobby Walsh recruits small town boy Joe Palooka to take his place. First in the series.

The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.