It was entered into the 22nd Berlin International Film Festival where Alberto Sordi won the Silver Bear for Best Actor award.

[1] Roman surveyor Giuseppe Di Noi, who has emigrated in Sweden marrying a local woman and becoming a respected citizen, decides to take his family on holiday in Italy.

He is unwillingly involved in a riot, and as a result is transferred to a prison for inmates serving life sentences, and ultimately to a psychiatric facility.

It takes the obstinacy of his wife, the passionate interest of his lawyer and the benevolence of the investigating magistrate otherwise on vacation, to arrive at a logical explanation.

While recovered at the hospital, Di Noi's lawyer learns about a highway viaduct Battipaglia-Matera, built years before by an Italian firm where he was employed, which collapsed and caused the death of a German driver in transit.