- Stefano marries Maria by proxy after moving to Canada.
- Northern Italian Stefano marries sweetheart Maria by proxy while working abroad in Canada. However, she is mistakenly accused of her sister's crime of abandoning her own child and, when Stefano finds out, he decides to call off their marriage.—Playpilot
- After leaving his smuggling business, Stefano Brunot emigrated to Winnipeg, Canada to work as a lumberjack. Here he works to get to be joined by Maria Dermoz, his girlfriend, who he met while escaping the customs officers who were hunting him. Maria, however, hesitates to join him, because she has to take care of her young sister Lisetta. To comply with Canadian immigration laws, the two must marry, and they do so by proxy, a solution suggested to him by his employer, also Italian, who took a liking to him.
Lisetta has a relationship with Dario, nephew of Countess Lamieri, the rich landowner of the mountain town where the two sisters live. This girl, who doesn't want Dario to hook up with a mountain girl, pushes him away, sending him first to study in the city and then to Buenos Aires, where the young man will join his father. But Lisetta is expecting a child from him and the countess, worried about this possible scandal and pretending to give good advice to Maria, makes the young girl go away. For these reasons Maria continues to postpone her departure for Canada, where Stefano, increasingly worried about her, waits for her in vain.
When Lisetta gives birth, a servant of the countess, Agnese, on the instructions of her rich mistress, takes the newborn to church and abandons him. Maria discovers this crime and rushes to the church to recover the child: but she is mistaken for the child's mother and for the one who abandoned him, and arrested.
Lisetta dies shortly after and Maria, who was unable to defend herself, is sentenced to 1 year and 6 months in prison for abandoning her child, who in the meantime has been placed in an orphanage. Stefano learns of the sentence and, disappointed and shocked by Maria's betrayal, asks for and obtains the annulment of the marriage. Then, rejecting the advances of Laura, his employer's dissatisfied wife, he leaves to seek his fortune towards the Great North. Maria, having served her sentence, leaves prison, but she discovers that she is financially ruined and therefore decides to abandon her native town in search of work.
Twelve years pass. Stefano has made his fortune in Canada, while Maria in Italy has dragged herself from one job to another, with the sole aim of caring for and loving Nino, Lisetta's son, who actually believes that she is her mother. The hardships have affected Maria's health, and she falls ill while she is back in the village, where Stefano, now rich, has also returned. Despite her years, he has not managed to forget her and seeks her again. Meanwhile, Dario has died in Argentina in a car accident, and Stefano learns the truth from the countess, desperate for her loss and tortured by remorse for all the harm she did to Lisetta and Maria. All the misunderstandings that had driven them apart therefore disappear and now Stefano and Maria can finally embrace each other again and raise Nino as if he were their own son.
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By what name was Chi è senza peccato.... (1952) officially released in Canada in English?
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