Guido Maldini lives with his family in estate in the Po Valley countryside during the times of fascism. His violent temperament makes him hated by everyone and above all by his son who, seized by exasperation, tries in vain to kill him.
Luigi is engaged to a rich bourgeois, but unexpectedly his cousin Sonia comes back to Italy. She is very young and beautiful and once she loved Luigi. What is he to do?