In 1950s Italy, a government official arrives in a rural town to investigate a grisly child murder. The culprit is a young boy who claims he acted in order to kill the Devil itself.

Unemployed Domenico robs a bank, but is forced to take a hostage when things go wrong. The hostage, Tommaso, is a man who hates his wife and job, and who was already planning to run away with his gay cop lover anyway, so this seems to him like a good opportunity to disappear and start over again: the kidnapped becomes the kidnapper, and things get even more complicated when the two are joined by Rita, Tommaso's beautiful daughter.

Four waiters and a cook working at a seaside restaurant hate one another but still keep working together for lack of better opportunities.

Antonio (Enrico Salimbeni) may not have been the most energetic waiter in the most popular restaurant in this unfashionable Adriatic tourist town, but that is no reason for his boss not to pay him. When he takes the wages that he is owed out of the till, not only does the owner throw him out, but he has him beaten up, to boot. Enzo (Mario Adorf), the owner of a restaurant so far off the beaten track it is widely known as Abissinia rather than being called by its true name, takes him in. The leisurely pace of everything that is done at the restaurant leaves Antonio with plenty of time to put together the story of its owner and the love of his life, and how he, too, fell from culinary glory to his present obscurity.

Two penniless cousins have a common passion: to be inventors, but they never managed to make money out of their patents. Their only hope is represented by their hateful and rich uncle.

Two young twins grow up in the Emilia province, expressing the two faces of an era and the adolescent nature that clashes with traditions.

In 1920s Bagheria, Giuseppe 'Peppino' Torrenuova works as a shepherd to financially help his poor family. Over the next fifty years, Giuseppe's life, as well as the life of the village, is observed. Giuseppe grows up, joins the Communist Party, marries a local girl, has children, and forges a political career for himself.

April 24, 1993: it's the last broadcast of Radiofreccia, an independent radio station closing after 18 years, barely one minute before coming of age. Bruno, one of its founders, begins to tell its story, the story of a group of friends—especially troubled Freccia's—and a period of their youth in their small hometown.