Marcello is a young film restorer. One day while working on the restoration of an Italian classic, The Railroad man by Pietro Germi, he realizes there's one extra, in the background of a scene, wearing clothes entirely out of context: it's a black dressed man with a bowler hat on his head. Marcello has fun while watching the same scene over and over again, how was it possible that nobody saw this funny man before? Few days later, Marcello is watching another Italian classic few years older than the previous movie and he's puzzled by the discovery that the same man is actually appearing in the background of a scene, again with those black clothes and that funny hat. Another mistake? This is a very interesting discovery. But later on, when Marcello discovers the same man again appearing in a silent film, older more than 60 years than the others, the surprise and amusement leave room for another kind of feeling: fear. The man is always dressed with that weird outfit. When Marcello decides to look closer to more movies, he finds out the man is actually appearing in at least a scene of every single one of them. But nobody believes Marcello, nor his girlfriend, neither is boss at work. Nobody seems to realize what's going on in those frames. Then, even more scarier, the man appears just in front of the lab Marcello is working.