Silvio (Alberto Sordi) is an Italian partisan, he and his companions belong to Italian resistance movement fighting against the Nazis. They are at Lake Como. He is helped by Elena (Lea Massari). He spends three months hiding in Elena's grandfather's mill. They fall in love. Silvio is an idealist, communist, journalist writer. He goes back to war.
The film spans the story of Italy from 1944 to 1960, from the times of poverty in World War II to the birth of the Italian Republic, the elections and Silvio's ideals of the Italian Communist Party, his stay in jail, his disappointments, his crises with Elena, his attempts to get his works published and to sell his film scripts in Cinecittà to Alessandro Blasetti, Silvana Mangano and Vittorio Gassman (they appear as themselves).

Two trains collide: who said that rail was a safe mode of transport? A young Pole girl becomes an orphan and a semi-whore, and Mara (Silvanna Pampanini) would like to adopt her. Alas she lives a life of sin and she and the nuns who take care of the girlie are worlds apart. So she decides she would start over, leaving her pimp (Franco Fabrizi) behind and trying to get a job, which is no easy task. No sooner has she found work in a factory than her former lover (who gave her a child who died when she was young: hence her longing to have another one) turns up. He is played by Marcello Mastroianni who was supporting at the time. Of course he thinks that the new child is his own and as his wife cannot conceive...
This "slave to sin" (check the title) suffers, suffers and suffers; every time she seems to work it out, every time something happens. The movie is a long flashback told by an old woman who stole a medallion in the hotel where she works as a linen maid.

Cute Sophie is an amoral French girl living in a sumptuous Venetian palazzo. She is the kept woman of a very rich but undesirable fellow named Eric von Bergen, an ex-nazi turned forger.

This South American adventure drama finds Charles (Charles Aznavour), a youthful Frenchman traveling to Paraguay to start a new life. Seeking out a rich uncle, the idealistic nephew is rejected by his miserly relation, and he goes on to get involved with a shady woman and a band of gun runners who supply arms for the revolution of the week. Charles and his new girlfriend head for the border after a shootout with federal troops, and a kindly railroad worker hides the couple in an abandoned copper mine. Charles is later thrown in prison while the girl becomes a concubine, but her violator is killed when Charles escapes to rescue her and exact revenge. A pretty harrowing composition could be written by the young couple on "How I Spent My Summer Vacation."

A businessman is nicknamed "L'avvocato" and his driver, Oscar, is a yes-man. When L'avvocato has a crash while driving his car, Oscar is put in jail in his place. When Oscar gets out, he finds himself married to the beautiful Maria, but he can't even touch her: she is l'avvocato's lover. Afterwards Oscar is appointed manager, but he can't manage a dime. At the end he shall find himself again in jail, hoping that his "sissignore" (yessir) will let him have, sometime, a driver to send to prison in his place. —