The film is a tribute to Naples, where director De Sica spent his first years, this is a collection of 6 Neapolitan episodes: a clown exploited by a hoodlum; an unfaithful pizza seller (Loren) losing her wedding ring; the funeral of a child; the impoverished inveterate gambler Count Prospero B. being reduced to force his doorman's preteen kid to play cards with him (and losing regularly); the unexpected and unusual wedding of Teresa, a prostitute; the exploits of "professor" Ersilio Miccio, a "wisdom seller" who "solves problems".
In L’Oro di Napoli (1947), Giuseppe Marotta wrote of Naples’s “remote, hereditary, obstinate and intelligent endurance” ... Interviewed in Vincenzo De Simone’s documentary, La Gente di Napoli, Avitabile ...
