Aquiles Taveira is a civil servant harassed by his own family's financial demands. Tired of it, he decides to fake an embezzlement at his work and runs away to the seaside resort of Guarujá, where he manages to live peacefully, for too short a time.

In a hospital bed, Eduardo, a married man, remembers his involvement with the young Anita, until their downfall.

This was Brazil's first feature film in color.

Ms. Violante Miranda is a bordello owner who raises a small girl as her own granddaughter. When she gets a little older, she is sent to study in Europe, and when she returns, she becomes a socialite, rejecting her previous milieu and her "grandmother".

Sílvia Nogalis, a renowned concert pianist, prefers her career to her marriage. On the night she performs Beethoven's "Appassionata", she learns of the death of her husband, maestro Walter Hauser.