The adventures and deceptions of a photographer who travels through small villages of 1950s Sicily pretending to work for the big film studios in Rome.
Matteo Scuro is a retired Sicilian bureaucrat, a widower with five children, all of whom live on the mainland and hold responsible jobs. He decides to surprise each with a visit and finds none as he imagined.
Tommaso Scalia is a man who commits three murders: he kills his superior who sacked him, the man who replaced him and his wife. He wants a quick trial and an early execution, but an earnest, principled assistant judge looks for a way to save the murderer from being shot, because he does not belive in capital punishment.
Vaguely inspired to the real story of boss of the Camorra's bosses Raffaele Cutolo, this is the story of the criminal career of "Il professore" (the professor). He is in prison, and by there he is able to build, step by step, an empire founded on murders and drugs. He starts a war to destroy all the old Camorra bosses and becoming the new "boss of the bosses". With his sister's help he manages to evade from prison and escape in New York. Here he starts immediately a new relationship with "Cosa Nostra" (Italian American Mafia). He is going to seat on the peak of the most powerful criminal organization, and the Italian authorities are almost impotent.
Mario (Placido), an Italian American who manages a pizzeria in NYC, is charged with an assassination of a judge in Palermo. He leaves the States, comes back to Sicily and recruit Michele, his younger brother, for some help. Michele is a good guy not involved with the Mafia, that is trying to build his life on honesty and hard-working. Michele needs some money to give freedom to a prostitute he is in love, and Mario promise his help in change of an hands to set up his trap for the judge. Anyway Michele isn't made with the same "pasta" of Mario, he couldn't never be a real Mafioso and this causes many between the two brother and the Mafia. There is only a way for Mario to save his brother. A way that Mafia could like.