This film traces the prison life of a group of women who-rather than being prepared to reenter society-are brought to the limits of depravity. Martine, wrongly imprisoned will bear the scars of a prison system wrongly based on punishment rather than rehabilitation.

During the Second World War, the Germans hunt an Italian partisan who is trying to blow up a chemical weapons laboratory.

A young man from Southern Italy kills his "protector" who had refused to allow him to marry his daughter and then they escape to America.