Anna, a rich lady, decides to finance in great secrecy a singular enterprise: the founding of a real center for the creation of ideas, directed by Mario Morelli, a poet and songwriter perpetually waiting for great success, and a painter, Enrico Bovio, who cannot find the inspiration or the model for a portrait of a woman he wants to finish. Both are short of money and, convinced of the brilliance of their ideas, wish to open that bizarre business, called precisely the "Bazaar of Ideas".

September 1939 in Estavayer: An anti-aircraft battery of the Swiss militia takes up position near a hotel on the border. The daughter of the house is adored by all the soldiers. During a nighttime air battle in which a "foreign" aircraft is shot down, one of the soldiers is killed. Only the girl can comfort the overwhelmed soldiers; it is only an emergency during a storm that brings them together.