Totò and his son Ninetto Davoli wander through the streets and countryside around Rome, a journey that blends quiet humor with a stark look at struggle. Their stroll leads them to witness a body being carried from a house after a murder, a small moment that opens up a larger world of ambition, poverty, and memory. The pair’s walk is interrupted by a talking crow, who appears with intertitles that frame it as a left-wing intellectual of the kind that existed before Palmiro Togliatti’s death, setting up a tone that is at once philosophical and playful.
The Crow then recounts the story of Fra Ciccillo and Fra Ninetto, two Franciscan friars who are sent by Saint Francis to preach the Gospel to the hawks (the powerful) and the sparrows (the weak). After persistent misfires, the friars discover the language of birds and manage to deliver the commandment of love to the hawks and to the sparrows separately, but they cannot persuade the two groups to love each other. Saint Francis explains the relationship between the two factions from a Marxist perspective, inviting them to persevere in their mission even as the social divide remains painfully clear.
Back in the present, the journey continues with the Crow still in tow. Totò and Ninetto encounter a sequence of encounters that satirize different social strata. Landowners who order them off their land when they are caught defecating, a family living in absolute poverty with no food who face eviction, and a group of traveling actors who embody many of society’s margins—women, LGBTQ people, the elderly, racial minorities, and the disabled—persuade the pair to push the group’s Cadillac for them. The narrative juxtaposes humor with hardship, turning each small episode into a meditation on power, need, and solidarity.
A later segment shows a wealthy man waiting for the money Totò owes him, a contrast to the earlier demand for rent. The film then shifts to a montage of news footage, including the funeral of Palmiro Togliatti, which punctuates the satire with a real-world moment of political significance. The odyssey reaches a shocking close when, after a fateful encounter with a prostitute, Totò and Ninetto kill and eat the Crow, exposing a grim turn that reframes the entire journey as a brutal, unsettling moral parable.
Throughout this bold voyage, Pasolini threads social critique with fable-like fantasy, using the humor and warmth of its two leads to explore class tension, ideology, and the human appetite for meaning. The film’s opening mood is intensified by Ennio Morricone’s score, highlighted by a sung credits sequence performed by Domenico Modugno, which gives the movie a cantata-like welcome that lingers long after the final frame.
This layered narrative invites viewers to read the shifts between the fable told by the Crow and the larger, often harsher realities that Totò and Ninetto encounter on the road. It remains a distinctive blend of satire, myth, and social commentary, anchored by the enduring chemistry between its two stars and the provocative ideas that Pasolini threads through every scene.
