Sicily, July 1943. A little town is shocked by the news that American troops have landed in Italy. Fascism is over, but the Americans have not yet arrived here. For 3 days, the population lives a sort of Utopia, in the absence of the authority. The protagonist, Giuseppe, is a young intellectual undecided about what to do both in politics and love. He's pulled by different groups (landlords and farmers, communists and catholics, the mafia and people nostalgic for Mussolini) and by two opposite kinds of women: the seductive Anna and the passionate Pina.