A film about twin bothers Jacob & Esau

The film covers a hundred years in the lives of the Ricordi family, the Milan publishing house of the title, and the various composers and other historic personalities, whose careers intersected with the growth of the Ricordi house. It beautifully draws the parallel between the great music of the composers, the historic and social upheavals of their times, as well as the "smaller stories" of the successive generations of Ricordi.

A weak-willed Italian man becomes a fascist flunky who goes abroad to arrange the assassination of his old teacher, now a political dissident.

When she is in jail to defend her colleague, the secretary Anna Alessandri finds out that her man got engaged to another woman.

When young Andrea arrives in Barcelona to begin her university studies, she stays at her aunt Angustias' house, where she lives with several relatives with whom she has constant arguments.

Gerardo, an aspiring actor, trying unsuccessfully to cross over from comedy to tragedy, is involved, due to his ability to mimic dialects of Italy, in a scam concocted by Lallo against a rich cloth-merchant.

The Provence, somewhere in the 1950's. Paul Verdier, traveling salesman, leaves his home and his quarrelsome wife for his weekly round. On the train he meets a young woman, Marie, who looks a little lost. No wonder. Marie is pregnant but lacks the customary husband. She's returning to her village but is not exactly looking forward to the confrontation with her parents and the villagers, all pretty conservative people. After getting to know Paul a little better (for which there is ample time during the trip by train and bus) Marie decides to ask Paul to act as her husband, just to allay the suspicions of her family. After some hesitating Paul accepts, charmed by the girl and unaware of the complications such is bound to cause to his own life.