Bruno Fioretti, known as "Mandrake", is an inveterate gambler who never misses a day at the horse racing track in Rome. He is doubly unlucky: he bets too much on one horse, and his wife is sleeping with his best friend because Mandrake is always at the track. Penniless and cuckolded, Mandrake decides to make one last bet.

Ras (Eli Wallach) is a ruler or dictator who covets another man's wife (Mariangela Melato) as his own. He gets what he wants, but Ras wants more: in this case, to humiliate Marcello (Nino Manfredi), a dedicated musician whose life he has already ruined by leaving his cat and taking his wife. He forces Marcello to seek an annulment to his marriage through the Vatican. Ras gets everything, but Marcello's wife, Giulia, and Marcello have other ideas.

In the decadent Roaring Twenties, a beautiful woman engages in affairs with two men, playing them against each other.