Ukraine, 1942. Italian troops are fighting against the Soviet Union. A military chaplain volunteers to stay behind with a badly wounded Italian soldier, even though this means certain capture.

Paola, a Milan call girl, returns home to her village in the Abruzzi mountains in an attempt to go straight. Rejected by her father, blackmailed by a former lover, and lusted after by her brother-in-law, she turns to her beloved sister for support. Denied succor, like so many of Rossellini’s isolated figures, Paola awaits the arrival of her fiancé, who has offered her a new start, but instead decides that life is untenable.