[1] It is a remake of the 1937 film Il signor Max in which De Sica had played the title role.

A newspaper vendor masquerades as a count, falling in with a baroness and her wealthy, aristocratic friends.

Some time later, in Rome, while working in the newsstand, he meets Lauretta who is very surprised by the similarity between Alberto and Count Max.

A series of transformations, in which Alberto wears the clothes of the count, who courts the baroness, and those of the newsagent, who make Lauretta suspicious, lead him to have to choose between living a rich life but not his own and another more normal one that belongs to him.

The decision comes when he discovers the arrogant and humiliating way in which the nobles treat the beautiful and sweet Lauretta.