Marco returns home after eight years of exile by the war and as a prisoner of war to find his beloved married to an other and his own son alienated enough to prefer the substitute father to Marco, whereupon Marco finds no other choice but to kill himself, but in that effort he is saved by the beautiful Elvira who lives alone with her father, and they offer him an opportunity to start a new life, but all Marco wants is to get away from it all to Argentina, which way of escape a doubtful friend Nicola tempts him with, an enterprise which takes a lot of money, which they try to obtain by fraudulent means. Of course, such a story can't but go from bad to worse, and the beginning of the tragedy ends up an even greater tragedy with two unnecessary deaths. This is not an Italian noir, it is an Italian black which only grows blacker all the time, but the acting is magnificent, Marcello Mastroianni as a hopeless and helpless victim of his own destiny is more than convincing, and so is Doris Duranti as Elvira who loves him too much to rather follow him on the way down than to let him go. The music is also tantalisingly beautiful all the way.