A poor Midwest family is forced off of their land. They travel to California, suffering the misfortunes of the homeless in the Great Depression.

Between his white trash family, drunken father, dimwitted brother, and his goody-goody best friend, it's amazing that Christopher Titus is alive, let alone engaged to a "normal" girl.

In postwar, poverty-stricken Rome, a man, hoping to support his desperate family with a new job, loses his bicycle and main means of transportation to work. With his wide-eyed young son in tow, he sets off to track down the thief.

Tells the story of one year in the life of a community of peasants in late-nineteenth-century Northern Italy.