Farfallon, Franco Franchi a Sicilian pastry chef, is imprisoned for attempted murder and becomes fixated on breaking out to exact revenge on his wife. While being moved by sea after a riot, he is approached by a fellow prisoner turned politican, the Barone di Vistacorta, Ciccio Ingrassia, who entrusts him with guarding a precious cartridge case containing a significant sum of money.
A failed escape to Naples leads Farfallon into the hands of the Trappistine nuns, among them Suora Sfoglia Carla Mancini. In exchange for his pastry wisdom, the sisters betray him by handing him over to the Vatican’s Swiss Guards, commanded by Gino Pagnani. During another transfer, Farfallon seizes a distraction and slips away again, seeking refuge inside the refrigerated body of a meat truck and finding himself smack in the middle of a shipment of meat en route to the prison.
On arrival, the Barone di Vistacorta is there too and immediately senses the strange atmosphere inside the prison, a climate of permissiveness and even a strange unity between the male and female sections. Yet Farfallon’s thirst for escape and his burning urge to revenge his wife remain untouched by the evolving environment. With a dreamlike vision of St. Peter testing a bargaining of his fate, a secret passage from his penalty cell to a tunnel that leads outside is revealed. Using a ruse, and with the Barone’s help, the plan moves forward, and the director of the prison—Mario Carotenuto—facilitates the escape, though the Barone becomes part of the audacious risk.
The escape leads them to a harsh new world: the Criminal Agricultural Colony, where a stern director imposes a rigid, opposite prison system. The two endure grueling labor, humiliations, and a harrowing eight-year sentence in a penalty cell, sparked by a staged accusation involving the director’s wife and sister-in-law. The wife, Immacolata, is played by Rosanna Ruffini, while the sister-in-law’s fate tightens the claustrophobic fate inside these walls. Their shared ordeal under this new authority sets the stage for an even more peculiar chance at flight.
After emerging from the penalty cell, a peculiar inmate named Leonardo, Fiorenzo Fiorentini, becomes involved in their plans. Leonardo is obsessed with the idea of reproducing the flight of birds and proposes that they test wings he has built. Farfallon is the first to leap from a cliff, plunging into the water, only to emerge unharmed—an ironic testament to the invention’s failure—while the Barone, ever the opportunist, chooses not to jump.
In the final credits, it’s revealed that Farfallon eventually swims back to Sicily, where a chilling reckoning takes place: he kills his wife Immacolata and the Baron's lover before being arrested once more. This time, he ends up in life imprisonment, sharing a grim fate with the Barone that began in the Mezzogiorno’s prisons and would haunt him for the rest of his days.
