When World War II breaks out, two German lovers are cruelly separated. While he is sent to fight at the front, she, a Jewish girl, is sent to a concentration camp where humiliation and death have been elevated to a sinister art.
Back home after his wife's death, a migrant labourer faces a dilemma between a high-paying job overseas and one last chance at reconnecting with his son, who sees him only as a stranger because of all his years abroad.
Achilles, a Hulot-like factotum for an evening newspaper, travels around looking for a scoop in the Milan of the "economic miracle."
