[1] [2] Giuseppe Marchi, dominated as a child by an authoritarian and despotic father in his uniform as a marshal of the carabinieri, grew up in a modest family, kept his studies thanks to great sacrifices and always frustrated by difficulties and anguish, now fifty years old, adds regret to his pains of not having had time to see his father on his deathbed again.
Unsuccessful screenwriter, after living with Sylvaine, a French widow, he is seduced by a much younger girl whom he marries because she becomes pregnant.
When his wife leaves with the baby to spend two months in Siusi, Giuseppe, forced into a bust recommended to him because he has a mobile kidney, remains in the Roman heat to try to write the first chapter of his autobiography.
Meanwhile, his script is rejected because the client, in trouble with the tax office, moves elsewhere, leaving Giuseppe, to repay his debt, some land cultivated with olive groves in Calabria.
Finally, man entrusts himself to a psychoanalyst, whose response is easy and very quick: at the root of his existential evil there is the father figure and his conditioning and, now that he knows, everything appears clearer and he thinks of be healed.