I Vitelloni

A violent downpour on the Adriatic coast interrupts the beachside beauty pageant. Sandra Rubini, crowned Miss Mermaid 1953, faints, and rumors spread that she is pregnant by Fausto Moretti. The town buzzes with speculation as summer ends.

Under pressure from Francesco, Fausto agrees to a shotgun wedding with Sandra. The ceremony is a sparsely attended middle-class affair. The newlyweds then depart for a honeymoon in Rome.

Fausto and Sandra leave for a honeymoon in Rome, stepping into a world beyond their provincial town. The trip marks a temporary escape from the town's expectations. The couple returns to a different reality, still financially strapped.

Fausto returns to an unemployed life, living with his parents. His twenty-something friends drift from empty cafés to seedy pool halls and windswept beaches, filling time with petty pranks. One reckless day they taunt road workers from a luxury car, only to be beaten when the car breaks down.

Moraldo, the youngest vitellone, watches Fausto's womanizing with unease and questions the point of their provincial lives. He dreams of escaping to the city, balancing desire with loyalty to family and friends.

Riccardo nurtures ambitions to sing and act. Alberto is a daydreamer living with his mother and Olga, who secretly dates a married man. Leopoldo writes a play and discusses it with Natali, an eccentric stage actor he hopes will perform in it.

Back from the honeymoon, Fausto takes a job as a stockroom assistant in Michele Curti's religious articles shop. The respectable steady job clashes with his restless temperament and lifestyle.

Fausto continues to pursue other women even in Sandra’s presence, showing his inability to settle into a conventional marriage. His flirtations intensify the strain of their precarious domestic life.

At the annual masquerade ball, Fausto is bedazzled by Giulia Curti, the wife of his employer. Alberto, in drag and wearing an oversized carnaval head, performs a surreal dance that unsettles the evening. The night exposes fractures beneath the town’s respectable surface.

Returning from the ball at dawn, Alberto is shattered to learn that his sister Olga is running off with her lover. The revelation further strains the family’s fragile stability.

Fausto makes a clumsy play for Giulia, then is humiliated when her husband fires him. In revenge, he steals a statue of an angel from Curti’s shop and enlists Moraldo to help hawk it. They fail to pawn it to a convent or a monk, who both turn them away.

The angel statue is abandoned with a simple-minded peasant who sets it on a mound outside his hut and caresses it. The object becomes a quiet, strange remnant of the characters’ failed swagger.

Sandra runs away with the baby after a one-night stand. Moraldo and the others join Fausto in a desperate search for wife and child. They eventually find her at Fausto’s father’s home, where Francesco belts Fausto in a fit of rage.

Fausto and Sandra reconcile and walk home together, hopeful about their life ahead despite the town’s stifling ordinariness. Meanwhile, Moraldo boards a train, imagining his friends sleeping and dreaming their lives away in some distant future.