Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is assigned to the old Bastiani border fortress where he expects an imminent attack by nomadic fearsome Tartars.

Five short stories loosely dealing with the roles of women in society. A superstar actress travels to a mountain resort, only to evoke jealousy from women and lust from men. A woman offers to take an injured man to the hospital. A widowed father and his son seek for a new wife/mother. A man seeks revenge for a woman's honor. A bored housewife tries to explain to her husband that he's not as romantic as he used to be.

The nature of love and marriage is studied in two episodes.

During his military service, the young singer Gianni Traimonti falls in love with Carla, the marshal's daughter.

A young duke marries a girl, also penniless, and moves into a bus left him by an uncle, with their ten children. At last he finds the bus is made of solid gold.

After 16 years of marriage ends with him running away and vanishing into thin air. The wife goes in search of him, but instead of finding him, he ends up in various perversions, eventually reaching suicide.

A well known actor comes to off-season Capri to unwind and meets a young man. The attraction is immediate and mutual but before their relationship can get off the ground, an alluring woman with a spontaneous sexuality and care free attitude joins the triangle and the boy is slowly pushed out of the picture.

As the railroad builders advance unstoppably through the Arizona desert on their way to the sea, Jill arrives in the small town of Flagstone with the intention of starting a new life.

A young singer secretly gets married since he does not want to let his fans down. After a while the gutter press make up a love story which seriously worries his young bride.