Artist Pietro Leoni is preoccupied with feminine beauty. While walking near an old castle in Italy, he sees a young woman dive in the water from a rock and becomes determined to sculpt her from memory. He rents a house near the spot and falls in love with the mentally disturbed daughter, Francesca, of the castle's owner, W. C. Hutton, while becoming involved with her sister, Marisa unaware of her identity.

Camilla, a middle-aged Venetian widow, arrives in Rome to take up service as a maid for the Rossetti family, who are not prosperous. With her discreet presence, she is an element of cohesion for them thru tensions and misfortunes.

A man comes home from the war and finds both his plant and his family destroyed.

In his first collaboration with renowned screenwriter and longtime partner Cesare Zavattini, Vittorio De Sica examines the cataclysmic consequences of adult folly on an innocent child. Heralding the pair’s subsequent work on some of the masterpieces of Italian neorealism, The Children Are Watching Us is a vivid, deeply humane portrait of a family’s disintegration.

While recuperating from their injuries in a hospital, three young women flash back to the events leading up to the catastrophe. Remata (Lia Amando) has spent her entire life trying to overcome a childhood rape. Annamaria (Antonella Lualdi) has recently come out of an unfortunate marriage to a wealthy but insensitive boor. And Gianna (Eleanore Rossi Drago), the daughter of a college professor, has ruined her life with narcotics.

Maria, a prostitute, meets Cesare in a police station, a drunkard reporter. Cesare falls in love with her and wants to save her from her bleak life but the girl refuses any help.

A film made up of four episodes: a jar repairer gets trapped in a vat because of his hunch; a young unmarried mother is forced to beg to buy herself a fan; Rosario Chiarchiaro appears before a law court for casting spells; the discomfort of an overtight jacket gives a wedding witness the strength to persuade the bridegroom's reluctant parents to bless his union.