An Italian, German and French (Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française) coproduction, it was directed by Franco Rossi,[1] assisted by Piero Schivazappa and Mario Bava; the cast includes Bekim Fehmiu as Odysseus and Irene Papas as Penelope, Samson Burke as the Cyclops, as well as Barbara Bach as Nausicaa, and Gérard Herter.

To these answers, the people of Ithaca are silent and dare not oppose, yet the soothsayer Egizio, noting a hawk perched on the battlements of the palace, sees the success of Telemachus' journey, but is derided by the suitors.

The next day Nausicaa goes to the mouth and after doing the laundry, the princess starts to play with the maids, when she sees in the bushes a dirty man, naked and caked with salt and leaves with which he slept on.

As ordered by the goddess and also by her heart, Nausicaa has him washed and dressed by the maids, but she asks that, out of discretion, he did not follow her to the palace, or the young people would believe she had chosen him as a husband.

The nobles and monarchs of the palace, suspicious of all the foreigners who come to their land, fill him with questions, only to apologize for their abrupt and gruff interrogation, after they recognize in the hero a good man with nothing to hide.

Ten years had passed since the beginning of the war, but neither of the two factions gave up, until one day, on the shores of Ilium, the Trojans found the achaean camp deserted and a gigantic wooden horse on the beach.

In order to calm the spirits, Helen drugs the wine of her husband and of the guests to relieve their pain and tells of the time she saw Ulysses before Troy was conquered: after being beaten to death by his friend Diomedes to appear as a beggar, he had entered the city presenting himself as a Phrygian soldier attacked by his drunken comrades.

Ulysses, furious, threaten her of playing the double-cross and unnecessarily wasting time in that palace, since the entire army of Greece is fighting for her; he finally leaves her, warning her against her husband Menelaus.

However, Ulysses, deaf to the insistence of his companions who would like to leave after having taken the cheese, believes he can establish a dialogue with the inhabitant whose skills in making knots and producing good ricotta he appreciates.

Ulysses, without wasting time, after the Cyclops has fallen asleep dead drunk, calls to him his friends who heat the tip of the tree trunk: the prisoners intend to blind Polyphemus so that he can make them escape by opening the entrance.

With a shout of encouragement Ulysses and his companions thrust the pole, but the cry of pain of Polyphemus is so chilling and resounding that it makes them all fall to the ground, while the Cyclops, waving his hands, creates a great disorder and noise in the cave.

Aeolus, then, gathers all the winds and encloses them in a large sack made with the tanned skin of a ram, and gives them to Ulysses as long as he never opens the jar so as not to trigger a natural cataclysm.

Ulysses stops to reflect on his misfortunes, while the queen comments that after all he deserves all his troubles for not being vigilant and for having set himself against the gods, visiting unknown lands and disobeying the orders of friends with deception.

Suddenly Ulysses finds himself in a strange abode full of climbing plants and cages containing animals and birds of all kinds, all prisoners of the sorceress, but he is immediately invited to sit by Circe who offers him a golden cup.

Meanwhile, Circe laughs heartily, thinking that soon the unfortunate person would turn into a pig too, but suddenly she goes pale and begins to become terribly ugly: she has realized that her powers are ineffective on the hero.

Circe then takes the opportunity to hold back the hero a little longer, since the effect of the magic on his companions would disappear in a few days, and she spends passionate nights of love with him.

Ulysses performs the rite and immediately a group of mournful, weeping and sighing people appears, covered by heavy gray cloaks that leave only their faces uncovered.

The woman was still upset by the ancient sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia at the behest of her father, since the gods did not allow him departure for Troy, and she now had one more reason to slaughter Agamemnon: his betrayal with the Trojan prophetess.

His mother invites him not to despair and to hurry on his return to the island because if he is still late, his father Laertes, who had long since retired to live like a filthy hermit among animals, will soon die of a broken heart, too.

Ulysses also becomes aware of the abuses of the suitors who infest his palace by undermining Penelope's innocence, and hearing these words is seized by a wave of anger, but first tries to hug in vain his mother's knees, who disappears every time she is touched.

The last effort of Ulysses will be the stop on the island of the Trident, where there are grazing cows sacred to the god Helios, or the Sun, inviolable if one did not want to loom in the wrath of the divine master.

These are beings not visible to man, although the legend wants them with the bodies of rapacious birds and the heads of beautiful women, and they have the power to enchant travelers with their voice, to finally make them smash with the boat on the rock.

The ship has now reached the rock and while skirting it, Ulysses glimpses the bones of the unfortunate sailors victims of the Sirens and finally begins to hear their voices that penetrate his mind, obscuring it.

However, Ulysses, believing he was wasting too much time in the crossing and not getting out of it alive, took another longer route that brought him to the island of the Trident, consecrated to the god Helios (the Sun) for the cows grazing the grass.

In fact, Ulysses was reluctantly forced by his friends Heraclius, Eurilochus, Polites and Filetor, who no longer had faith in their commander; now sailors can only hope for the food they own and the prey to fish.

Ulysses, keeping his personal details hidden, tells him that he is an unfortunate sailor from Egypt and Athena praises him for his shrewdness, transforming him into an old beggar so that he is not immediately recognized by the inhabitants and family members, so that he can better plan his revenge.

Ulysses is amazed by the goodness of the man and begins to ask questions about the fate of that unfortunate fighter who left for Troy and never returned home, leaving his wife and son desperate, who went in search of him.

Getting that man on board proves to be an excellent action for Telemachus because Theoclimenus advises him to reverse the route to Ithaca, not passing through the Strait of Samos, since a snare of suitors was waiting there.

Then the goddess Athena appears to the hero and tells him that now he can finally reveal himself to his trusted family members and the night ends with a tender and moving embrace between Ulysses and his son weeping with joy.

Penelope is amazed and even deludes herself to recognize her beggar as her husband, but Ulysses controls his emotions by reminding her that he is only a Minoan warrior who fell from grace after the Trojan War.