A bankrupt aristocrat tries to keep up appearances while his situation worsens. To top it off the life savings given to him by a beggar to invest has been mistakenly claimed by the aristocrat's altruist society for their annual Feast of the Poor.

Mortal is ready to do anything to obtain a divorce from his wife Nadia. To compromise her, he needs to find her a lover. He thinks he has found the ideal candidate in the person of a manly private detective by the name of Robert Arnaud. But the experience gets out of Mortal's control as, on the one hand, Robert and Nadia fall in love for good, and, on the other hand, Robert, assisted by resourceful young Toto, manages to expose Mortal as the jewel thief he is.

The film portrays the comic adventures of a group of summertime travellers. Produced at the height of the fascist era, Treno popolare was nonetheless free of propaganda, and featured the first film score by the legendary composer Nino Rota.

Sole is the first film by the great Alessandro Blasetti and bears a complex relationship to the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes, a seminal event in Fascist political history.

A story of the Second Punic Wars, beginning with Scipio's futile pleas to the Roman Senate to build an army to battle Hannibal, that climaxes with the battle of Zama.