Fabio Santamaria Enzo Cerusico is a rail worker who spends a day off fishing and listening to a football game when a woman's scream breaks the quiet. He hastily discovers that a man has beaten a woman to death, and fear overtakes him as he tries to decide what to do. He darts away from the scene, and on his hike home he longs to report the crime to the police, but the weight of what he witnessed makes him hesitate at the station and retreat back to his own home. The tension of the moment lingers as he confronts the gravity of the event alone, unsure of who to trust or how to be heard.
Soon the public record twists the story in a troubling way. A newspaper reveals that the killer is a distinguished professor, Professor Eduardo Ranieri Riccardo Cucciolla, who has actually turned himself in to the police and named Fabio as the murderer. The revelation intensifies Fabio’s panic and makes his every move feel like a possible witness against him. In a frantic bid to disappear, he undertakes a covert overhaul of his appearance and life: he buys new sunglasses to replace the ones he lost, discards his flannel shirt and boots, shaves off his mustache, and even repaints his car. Each small alteration is a calculated attempt to conceal the truth he fears will convict him.
A priest, Don Giulio - Priest Umberto Raho, steps into the rising tension by urging Fabio to come forward and tell the police what he actually knows. Yet the timing is cruelly against him; by the time he finally approaches the authorities with a confession, the road he took to cover his tracks has already tangled him in a web of suspicion. The police, now armed with the changed appearance and the preserved fingerprints, begin to treat him as the prime suspect while the professor remains a free man in the eyes of the investigation.
The story’s ending exists in two contrasting versions. In the original ending, a reporter investigating the case, Don Peppino Enrico Maria Salerno, confronts Ranieri and the professor simply drives away, leaving the questions and consequences hanging in the air. In the later, reshot theatrical release, that same confrontation drives Ranieri to take his own life. A final note from the professor then reveals that Fabio has been cleared of the crime, which leaves Fabio, now imprisoned, with a bittersweet sense of relief and a hopeful eye toward release. This dual ending frames the moral weight of fear, rumor, and the rush to judgment that runs through the entire ordeal, while maintaining a firm, restrained tone that keeps the narrative's core tragedy intact.
