Forced to support herself, her children, her physically incapacitated husband and her obtrusive brother and mother, a downtrodden working woman contracts tuberculosis. She is granted a brief vacation at a health spa, where a whole new world — and potential new life — is opened up to her.

At the end of World War II, Giovanna, a war bride living near Milan refuses to accept that her husband, Antonio, missing on the Russian front, is dead. There's a flashback to their brief courtship near her hometown of Naples, his 12-day leave to marry her, ruses to keep from deployment, and the ultimate farewell. Some years after the war, still with no word from Antonio, Giovanna goes to Russia to find him, starting in the town near the winter battle when he disappeared. Armed with his photograph, what will she find?

Primary school teacher Mr. Mombelli, nevertheless satisfied with his life, is driven by his wife to resign and starting a new activity. He invest all his goodwill setting up a footwear little factory.

Italian televison adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel of the same name. Although it is to all intents and purposes a television miniseries, the rhythm of the acting is typically theatrical: the long dialogues, the acting style and the actorly interpretation make it a true example of episodic television theatre.

A photographer named Corrado snaps a picture of Antonietta. When it shows up on the front page of a magazine, she wants to take him to court over it.

Maria, a prostitute, meets Cesare in a police station, a drunkard reporter. Cesare falls in love with her and wants to save her from her bleak life but the girl refuses any help.

Sor Clemente escapes the surveillance of his wife and goes to attend a variety show.

By a twist of fate, the photogenic Milanese shop assistant, Clara Manni, gets the leading role in Italian movie producer Gianni Franchi's romantic drama, "Addio Signora", and becomes an overnight sensation in Rome.

An aging, down-and-out public employee must face the primary school examination.

Based on the Nikolai Gogol story but set in 1950s Italy, "The Overcoat" is the story of a poor city hall clerk whose only desire is to buy a new overcoat.

A number of different segments taken from 19th century Italian stories.

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 the Po Valley during the 19th century, a rich girl engaged to a well-to-do farmer ends up penniless and is forced to work for her fiancé’s relatives. Peasant unrest, carried to extremes by both workers and landowners, leads to violence and tragedy.

Sicily, early 1900s. An impoverished prince settles into the house of a rich shipowner and becomes his counselor.

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....

A singer saves a heavy alcoholic journalist. Fate has a new meeting for them: the two are found in a police station where she was brought with the accusation of prostitution.

In the absence of the biological mother, too busy pursuing her theatrical career, we see the glorification of the maternal surrogate, a woman who is a paragon of sacrifice and self-abnegation. La Fuggitiva is also a film in which a child actress takes a prominent role. In this sentimental drama, the little girl suffers for and rebels against the loneliness and neglect stemming from the lack of a mother and a loving family setting.

Franco, a young man of noble descent, marries Luisa, daughter of a humble clerk, against his grandmother's will.