Nando Moriconi is a young Italian living in the early '50s Roma. He is completely crazy for everything that comes from the States. He tries to speak American-English (the most funny ever), to wear like he thinks Americans do, to walk like John Wayne, trying to eat cornflakes with ketchup... His life is a complete parody of the real American way of life, which he couldn't ever get.

On December 24th the Orient Express gets snowbound near a little mountain village and its passengers are forced to spend some time there, mingling with the local people, upsetting their usually monotonous daily lives.

In the movie La valigia dei sogni (The Suitcase of Dreams, Italy, 1953) directed by Luigi Comencini, some sequences from Cenere are inserted. The protagonist is a former silent film actor who has saved old movies of his time from destruction, and uses them to set up recreational performances at schools. After an accidental fire and the risk of prison, he meets a rich producer who helps him to build a film museum.

Anna was the maid of a lady who inherited an apartment in a building in the center of Rome.

A fallen nobleman convinces a Roman coachman that he has found the way to win at Sambo, a Brazilian game of chance. Sent a messenger to Brazil to gamble, the two men go wild and run up debts. When they realize they have won nothing, they initially fall into total despair; however the coachman had played a coupon from the football pools on his own account. He will win and make things right.

A woman takes her ill husband's place in a smuggling ring and steals the heart of his partner.

The historic clock of a small town needs to be repaired but there is no money in the town coffers to pay for it. Don Paolo (Peppino Spadaro), the Priest, raises the money by lottery and thinks the surplus should go to the poor. The Communists and Socialists object because they are afraid the priest will get the credit and they claim it as "the people's money." The democratic mayor (Arturo Brogaglia) can think of no solution other than organizing committees and sub-committees. Finally, Rocchetti (Paola Stoppi), the town mechanic who has no answers for town problems and hates the clergy and politicians alike, comes forward and repairs the clock for the sheer joy of work.

An ex-boxer has trained his own son and leads him on to win the middle-weight championship of Italy. But the boy falls easy prey to a woman of light morals and renounces the hard work of sport to follow her to a winter luxury resort and at a certain moment, offers to marry her but she, not wanting to give up an advantageous connection, turns him down, advising the youth to not change the nature of their relationship. Then, the boy feeling the entire baseness of his situation, returns home to his parents who welcome him back with joy and takes up again a commitment to sport.

The rich banker Rosen of Livorno fear that the Bonapartist will take all his gold, so he is hiding it inside a cuckoo clock.