In the northern Italian town of Pavia during the 1930s, Carmine De Carmine [Renato Rascel] works as a clerk in the town hall and lives in a cramped rented room. He is diligent at work, yet is routinely ignored by the town's general secretary [Ettore Mattia] and by the mayor [Giulio Stival], a scheming and corrupt politician who has a wife [Dina Perbellini] and a mistress [Yvonne Sanson]. He wears a threadbare coat that leaves him shivering in winter, and he can barely afford even a decent winter garment.
One day a graceful woman, mistaking him for a beggar, slips him a substantial sum, money Carmine uses to pay a tailor [Giulio Calì] to craft an elegant coat with a fur collar. At work, he is inadvertently present at a compromising meeting in which businessmen promise a bribe to the general secretary, who, to keep Carmine quiet, promises him a large productivity bonus. The coat arrives and, when Carmine puts it on, he feels like a king, strutting about the town as if he owns the place, with the tailor proud of his role in the transformation.
On New Year's Eve, wearing his prized overcoat, he goes to the reception arranged by the secretary general. There he sees the same beautiful woman who had given him the money—the mayor's mistress—and, tipsy from the toasts, Carmine delivers a speech praising the impoverished masses, which is met with cold reception. He waltzes with the woman before leaving.
After the party, in a dark street, he is attacked and robbed of the coat. Desolate, he seeks help, but the crowd, including policemen and officials, remain indifferent, especially the mayor. He returns to his tattered coat, but soon suffers a nervous breakdown followed by pneumonia, which ends his life.
Yet Carmine's hurtful end does not end his story. After his funeral wagon passes, disturbing a pompous public ceremony led by the mayor, Carmine's apparition roams the town, tearing coats from passersby on cold, foggy evenings and frightening them with the sound of his voice. He appears in the house of the mayor's mistress, while the mayor is there, provoking a sense of unease that culminates when, on his way home through a dark street, he confronts Carmine's floating image. The mayor listens as Carmine speaks from beyond the grave about the weight carried by his lack of empathy, and as Carmine's words echo, the mayor's hair turns white and he is left to confront his own remorse.
