The quaint life of Ottavia, a widow living in Rome, is turned upside down when a young and pretty Japanese girl knocks at her door, claiming to be the daughter of her late husband, an Italian military officer who went to Japan on a secret mission during WWII and reportedly killed in action there.

Colonels, majors, lieutenants: all of them live in the same building. Some of them have a wife or children or none, but everyone has his orderly. Major Penna is harassed by Osvaldo's mother. Lt. Martucci gets involved in the love affair between Antonio, his orderly, and Lauretta.

Young painter Teddy is successful with women but not very clever about selling pictures. He is in love with Elisabetta but cannot marry her because he is penniless. The couple asks for help from Peppino, a retired clerk who often uses Teddy's painting, pretending that they are his so he can impress the women he likes.

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.

Roaming the vast jungles of Congo with his best friend, Bongo the gorilla, Antonio della Buffas, a mysterious man whom the natives call the "white monkey", is utterly unaware that he is the long-lost son of a wealthy explorer. Then, three opportunists manage to capture and bring the white savage to civilisation, bent on getting their hands on his immense fortune.

Antonio, a former variety actor, keeps his daughter in an excellent boarding school by organizing small scams with his friend and colleague Felice. Commissioner Malvasia good-naturedly persecuted him. When their respective unsuspecting children fall in love, the two fathers make peace.

Carlo wins some money and decides to go to Rome to celebrate, but he gets his money stolen on the train. He tries to find a friend of his for a loan. Unfortunately, he is at his wedding at the church. When Carlo goes there he met his runaway bride...

Baron Zazà, always broke due his dissolute lifestyle, decides to con a hefty sum of money out of his wealthy but greedy brother.

1944. Primo Arcovazzi is a fanatical and dim-witted Fascist Party militiaman who accepts to escort an opponent of the regime to Rome in the hope of be promoted — still oblivious as ever to the forthcoming fall of the regime.

Sophia Loren plays a dual role, as both the sultry Queen of the Nile with a "man-a-night" appetite and a beautiful slave girl who takes her place and is wooed by a bodyguard who thinks she's the real monarch.