In a small provincial Italian town, a fifteen-year-old boy meets and falls in love with a girl.

Six episodes (adapted from as many short stories: Gozzano, D'Annunzio, Guido Rocca, Marino Moretti, Alba de Céspedes and Oreste Biancoli), six love stories set in different moments in italian recent history.

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

Luisa Galli moves to Rome in search of a respectable job, but instead just finds a job as a waitress for the lawyer Giorgi.

The historic clock of a small town needs to be repaired but there is no money in the town coffers to pay for it. Don Paolo (Peppino Spadaro), the Priest, raises the money by lottery and thinks the surplus should go to the poor. The Communists and Socialists object because they are afraid the priest will get the credit and they claim it as "the people's money." The democratic mayor (Arturo Brogaglia) can think of no solution other than organizing committees and sub-committees. Finally, Rocchetti (Paola Stoppi), the town mechanic who has no answers for town problems and hates the clergy and politicians alike, comes forward and repairs the clock for the sheer joy of work.

The servant girl Carmela arrives from her village to work in the house of the notary Don Domenico, a hypocritical and ambiguous man, who seduces her. The girl flees from the house and falls into the clutches of a shrew who flatters her with promises and wants to exploit her beauty. A young man, Salvatore, known as Il Nero, who works in the sulfur mines, rescues her from the vile house and forces the notary to make amends for his wrongdoing by marrying her. The girl goes through the various events as if in a daze. On her wedding day, she faints before entering the church and falls seriously ill. Before she dies, she reveals that the sulfur miner was her only love and that his lack of understanding caused her illness.

Back from the war, a man discovers that his daughter has died and his wife has left their house. He searches for the girlfriend of a fellow soldier and falls for her.