After ending up in jail, a thief in Naples with a beautiful fiance and a good friend has to decide which path his life should take.

Two friends, Giacomino and Carletto, have no job and no money and are looking for a job, or any device that will help them to meet expenses and especially will give them the opportunity to fill their stomachs.

It is 1917, the period of the First World War when Italy is fighting Austria-Hungary. Lucilla di Torrebruna leaves high school and returns to her father, a colonel in the cavalry, who lives at San Donà di Piave.

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.

Ciro and Geppo are two thieves.

A lovely, incisive portrait of adolescents in the crowded San Giovanni quarter of Rome during the last years of WWII.