In the city of Ostuni in Puglia, the mute seminarian Ercole is designated to be the driver and nurse of Parsifal, the paraplegic son in a rich and sanctimonious family of landowners. Ercole soon becomes the lover of his master's wife, the beautiful Baroness Clotilde. In a familial and social context where only money, sex and power count, everyone tries to take advantage of everyone, but the real saprophyte turns out to be Ercole.
Michele, married to Rosaria, is a distinguished Neapolitan who "by profession" contacts only wealthy women, making her believe she wants to marry her to get money to disappear with. With this method he feeds his family.
Rome, 1870. Opponents of the church power are being sent to prison. Some of the exhausted prisoners are asking for the mercy of Pope. Others, like Augusto Parenti, prefer to fight for their rights until the end. His wife, Teresa is a simple woman, who gets involved with the rebels.
As Garibaldi's troops begin the unification of Italy in the 1860s, an aristocratic Sicilian family grudgingly adapts to the sweeping social changes undermining their way of life. Proud but pragmatic Prince Don Fabrizio Salina allows his war hero nephew, Tancredi, to marry Angelica, the beautiful daughter of gauche, bourgeois Don Calogero, in order to maintain the family's accustomed level of comfort and political clout.
A middle-aged man meets a young woman who is waiting on a canal bridge for her lover's return.
A troubled and neurotic Italian Countess betrays her entire country for a self-destructive love affair with an Austrian Lieutenant.
After the war, Aldo and his men became gangster. But now the times are changing and Aldo decides to became a policeman to help better his men in crime. He meets Giovanna and falls for her. But he begins liking his new job and after their first robbery, Aldo tries to leave his old accomplices...