In 19th-century France, middle-aged orphans Gasparre and Battista, watchmen at an orphanage, find out from a soothsayer that one of them is the offspring of the Hangman of Paris and the other is the son of a count. But it is only a dream of theirs.

Antonio is the humble servant of a rich family governed by the Marquis Gastone. He is a young man madly in love with Lulu, but she betrays him, and he desperately enlist in the foreign legion.

In Napoli, Nicolino Capece, a truthful pharmacist clerk becomes erroneously recognized as a dangerous Spanish criminal and decides to escape to Spain. In Siviglia, he is blackmailed by the bandit Cast who wants him to marry the rich Patricia Cotten and then kill her. So Nicolino play the bull fighter and heads to the arena....

In a small village two twin brothers are of opposite characters. One is mayor of the town, gruff and precise. The other is totally different from his brother and loves the good life and beautiful women.

Florence in 1848. There is a strong political tension in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Giovanni, a young Neapolitan composer who has just arrived in the city, accidentally comes into contact with some liberals and is convinced to compose the hymn of the Volunteers.

A bored civil servant accepts an invitation to visit a glamorous young lady. When she doesn't answer the door, then is later found murdered he panics!

A glamorous female singer Zazà has an affair with a passerby engineer Dufresne. But when Zazà impatiently comes to him in Paris she finds out that he is married and even has a daughter. He wants to escape from his relatives with Zazà, but, disillusioned and exhausted, she rejects his proposition and insists on his coming back to his family.

Franco, a young man of noble descent, marries Luisa, daughter of a humble clerk, against his grandmother's will.

A nineteenth-century Italian noblewoman, imprisoned in a foreboding lakeside palazzo by her uncle, comes to believe she's possessed by a long ago mistress of the manor.