Drama about mafia and jealousy in post-war Corleone. Placido, the son of Carmelo Rizzotto comes back from the war armed with a new anti-fascist consciousness but purer than ever of heart. He cannot accept the arrogance of the land managers and the brutal way in which they select those lucky few who will work the fields and whose families will be able to eat. He organizes the peasants and persuades them to occupy the land. His magnetic personality pulls the people in and he looks down on the world from his perch in the wind-swept mountains. He rebels against mafia power, and Placido manages to convince his father that he is right and the mafia is wrong. Luciano the Lame, a promising new recruit to the mafia hates Rizzotto and envies him his fiancee, who also happens to be the daughter of Liggio's lover. It is too easily for the "family" to pass off Placido's death as a crime of passion and honor to take away his fiancee. On the night on 10 March 1948 the Union leader of Corleone disappears and Captain Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa investigates.