Peppino Bardellotti, a widower, lives in Milan from his modest job as a sales representative.

Anna, the third daughter, on the other hand, is engaged to Sandro, a simple airline employee who, because of his meager income and his more modern ideas about the role of women, is not well received by the family.

Sofia is deluded by her fiancé Mongardi, who first promises to marry her but then abandons her by yielding to the economic blackmail of her father, a wealthy industrialist opposed to marriage.

They understand the illusion of having wanted to enter the cynical world of the rich and thus return, forgiven, to the family.

Anna, on the other hand, rejects a possible road to success in the movies and marries Sandro, happily leaving with him for their honeymoon.