The Decameron

The wealthy Neapolitan woman who claims to be his long-lost sister lures Andreuccio into a bedroom after supper. Once he's distracted, he steps onto what appears to be a bed but is actually a trap door that dumps him into a trough of filth below. The entire setup was a con to rob him of his money and clothes.

The prologue establishes Ciappelletto committing a murder and hiding a body, establishing that Naples is a city of schemes and deception.

After being dumped in the filth, Andreuccio meets two tomb-robbers planning to steal from the Archbishop's tomb. He joins them as a third partner. When they break into the tomb, Andreuccio finds a valuable ring on the corpse but pretends his search was fruitless. Later, during a fight between the robbers, Andreuccio hides, then bites one robber when mocked, causing the others to flee in panic. He escapes with the ring and their stolen goods.

Andreuccio's earlier humiliation in the trough motivates his turn from victim to trickster.

Ciappelletto, a known thief and con artist, travels to Germany on business. When he falls mortally ill, he crafts an elaborate false confession filled with fabricated pious deeds, confessing sins he never committed. A monk believes his performance and delivers a sermon praising Ciappelletto's supposed holiness. After his death, the crowd venerates him as Saint Ciappelletto, and people flock to his tomb seeking miracles, completely unaware his reputation was built entirely on lies.

The film opens with Ciappelletto committing murder and hiding the body, establishing his talent for deception.

Masetto seeks work at a convent filled with beautiful women. To avoid raising suspicion about a young man living among nuns, he pretends to be deaf and mute. The ruse works perfectly, the sisters, believing him incapable of speech, repeatedly approach him for sexual encounters, thinking their secrets are safe. When Masetto finally protests he cannot handle any more, the abbess pretends a miracle restored his voice to justify keeping him at the convent.

The gardener who recommends the job seems to know exactly what awaits Masetto there.

When Peronella's husband Giannello arrives home unexpectedly, her lover is already hidden inside a large pot. Peronella quickly invents a cover story, claiming she's been trying to sell the pot to a buyer who's currently inside examining it. The husband peers into the empty pot, sees nothing, and accepts the explanation. The lover then emerges from hiding while the husband is distracted, and the affair continues with the husband none the wiser.

The story follows other tales of deception and trickery in Naples, establishing a pattern of cuckoldry as comedic fare.

When Caterina's father discovers his daughter naked with Riccardo on the terrace at dawn, he faces a scandal that threatens family honor. Rather than punish the couple, he calculates that arranging a marriage will preserve the family's dowry and social standing, the dowry would have been lost had he denied the match. The wedding happens on the spot, resolving the crisis favorably for everyone involved.

The story is set in Valbona, a location that figures in later tales about honor and family reputation.

Elizabeth's brothers murder Lorenzo to prevent their sister from marrying beneath her station. After dreaming of Lorenzo's death, Elizabeth discovers his buried body in the garden and retrieves his severed head. She places it in a pot of basil and tends to it daily, creating a macabre memorial that allows her to maintain a connection to her dead lover while keeping the murder secret. The basil pot becomes her private mourning vessel.

The brothers' violent opposition to the romance plants the seeds for Elizabeth's discovery of Lorenzo's fate.

Don Gianni claims he can perform a ritual that will temporarily transform Gemmata into a mare so she can work the fields. The supposed transformation involves Gemmata undressing while Don Gianni chants, with the ritual described in clinical detail. In reality, it's a scheme to see Gemmata naked and sexually exploit her while her husband Pietro watches. Pietro initially complies out of greed for the promised payment but eventually realizes the deception.

The tale follows other stories of predatory men exploiting women through false pretenses.

Two friends, Meuccio and Tingoccio, debate what awaits them in the afterlife. Tingoccio dies first, and Meuccio dreams of a liminal space where Tingoccio tells him that sex, typically considered a sin, is not condemned as mortal in this celestial judgment. Elated, Meuccio rushes to his girlfriend and declares that lovemaking is not a sin after all. The tale toys with moral ambiguity rather than definitively answering whether sex is sinful.

Throughout the film, sex appears in various contexts, comical, transactional, and sacred, setting up this philosophical debate.

After completing the fresco that visually stitches together all the film's episodes, the painter's pupil pauses to reflect on creation itself. He muses that some works are better left as dreams, unfinished, uncorrupted by the compromises of actual execution. This closing question introduces philosophical ambiguity, suggesting that the act of dreaming or imagining may surpass the finished product in beauty, a contemplative note that contrasts with the earthy tales just told.

The epilogue returns to the frame story of Giotto's pupil, connecting the visual art of painting to the narrative art of storytelling.