Gino Usai

Rome, Italy. After committing a heinous crime, a senior police officer exposes evidence incriminating him because his moral commitment prevents him from circumventing the law and the social order it protects.

At the local cinema, an audience watches a Spaghetti Western matinee. During the film's on-screen climactic duel, a bullet is fired into a patron. With no leads and a theater full of suspects, police investigators lock the doors, put everyone back in their seats, and run the movie again. But will this shot in the dark reveal the real killer?

Former shepherds return to Sardinia from Milan in order to avenge a brother wantonly killed by bandits. In describing the grinding contrasts between places and personages of old and new Sardinia, director Piero Livi does not falter, photographing faithfully a desolated land, stuck in the past but alienated from traditional beliefs.

Based on a real WW2 episode. In 1944 in a small village in the Italian Appenines several inhabitants are executed in reprisal for a partisan attack on the German occupying troops. The lieutenant responsible for the execution becomes a priest and then a bishop and several years later he is put on trial for the killings.