Once upon a time a wise and kind old woman discovers a baby in her cabbage patch. She brings up the child and, when she dies, the boy, Totò, enters an orphanage. Totò leaves the orphanage a happy young man, and looks for work in post-war Milan. He ends up with the homeless and organizes them to build a shanty town in a vacant lot. When the squatters discover oil in the lot and the rich land-owner tries to get rid of them, Totò will need all the help he can get in order to find an impossible way out.
Based on Cesare Zavattini’s novel “Totò il buono”, it “is essentially a fairy story peopled by strange creatures who believe in miracles and who work them themselves; it is a fairy tale for young and old. And yet, the story is always posed midway between reality and fantasy.” (Vittorio De Sica)