Franca Rame

“A future historian, if he or she is honest, will feel a legitimate need to place the decade 1968 to 1978 alongside the great events that changed the world, such as the French and Russian Revolutions”. This was the guiding idea to which we entrusted, with considerable emotion, our personal memory and the archive footage that we took and collected during those years and which represent the physical body of the battles fought and victories gained everywhere during those ten years. Their value, in a country like Italy which has lost its memory, is a rare witness to the power of human dignity in a constant struggle for its redemption.

A housewife confides to her neighbour about the troubles she has been having with her possessive husband, her romantic lover and her lecherous invalid brother-in-law. In spite of the impressive battery of mod cons in her home, she feels that love and marriage are not all they are cracked up to be.

Young Italian writers and directors express themselves in four episodes about sex and love. "Love and Language," the first tale, centers on the difficulties of a Sicilian immigrant who is unable to master proper Italian. the second tale "Love and Life" centers on a jealous and unhappy wife who becomes so desperate to be free of her constantly philandering husband she takes on a lover of her own. "Love and Art" a nearly exhausted screenwriter hires a secretary to help manage his typing. She's a pretty lass and this makes his insecure wife crazy until he fires the female and hires a male secretary. "Love and Death," the final episode centers on the love affair between a middle-aged widower and the grieving young widow he meets at the cemetery. Unfortuantely for his bank statement, the young, impoverished beauty isn't as bereaved as she seems.

A young woman brings a baby to some military barracks. There is a note on the child - it says that the baby is hers and a soldier called Felice.

Tecla Cammarano, following a financial crisis that has made her situation precarious, leaves America and comes to Italy with her two lovely grandchildren.

Aldo, Vasco and "Smilzo" (Slim) are friends. They live with their parents and are training for boxing. But their real interest is in women. When casually Aldo meets Laura and falls for her. Will he succeed in winning her love?

Renato and Gedeon have just opened a nightclub in a disreputable area of New York, triggering the hostility of Gionata, a gang leader and owner of the nightclub across the street. Helped by the hoods of his gang, Gionata uses a couple of tricks to try and ruin his competitors. To begin with, he induces his friend Barbara, a vamp, to perform in a hot number in Renato and Gedeon's joint, so that the police intervene and close the club. The move fails, so Gionata decides to have Renatino, Renato's son, kidnapped by his men, which proves another flop. To make matters worse for Gionata, Michaela, his own daughter, has fallen in love with Renato, and sides with him and his partner...

Achilles, a Hulot-like factotum for an evening newspaper, travels around looking for a scoop in the Milan of the "economic miracle."

A high school girl, enamored by her young teacher, follows him and discovers that his home life holds many secrets.