Cesare, a long-distance fuel tanker driver, separates from his lonely young wife after they argue. This leaves him angry and taciturn. One day he meets Piera and he falls in love again. But after a while Piera too complains.
The film is set in a small Italian town in 1922, where a local group of Fascist blackshirts battle against rival socialists who have called a strike at the hospital. Mario, the young son of Doctor Cardini, is killed in the fighting.
Guido Renzi and his lawyer friend chase a beautiful girl to return a purse that he lost and after a long drive in the car reach the laboratory of an improvised astrophysicist - the girl's father - who, together with another scientist, is about to take off in the direction of Mars aboard a missile.
