Plot Summary

A farm family moves into a city maybe at the end of the Spanish Civil War. They move in with the sister of the farmers wife. In the city everything is illegal or immoral or both. The family consists of a mother, a father (Manuel), a son (Pepe), a daughter (Tonia) and a younger son (Manolo). The sister has a daughter (Pili). In the city they encounter El Mellao, a gangster that wants to seduce Pili. He works for Don Roque (the Chamberlain) who runs everything. These two men are evil. The sister makes money by having Pili sell cigarettes illegally from a basket on the streets. The innocent and moral father tries this but is at the mercy of street kids with no money demanding sweets. He cant say no to them. The police intervene and take his basket because he has no license. Pepe goes to work for the Chamberlain, taking the job from El Mellao because he is cheaper, driving the Chamberlains Packard and then with others stealing potato sacks for the Chamberlain off of trucks laboring up a steep hill. Tonia starts out as a maid for the Chamberlains mistress, but he hears her singing, buys her clothes, including silk stockings, buys her singing lessons, arranges her stage debut where three men, paid for by the Chamberlain, interrupt her performance, giving the Chamberlain the moment he needs to comfort her and deflower her. Now he has now more use for her. The father and Pepe are very angry at the deflowering of Tonia, the father blames his wife for encouraging her, and Pepe demands that the Chamberlain marry Tonia. When the Chamberlain he ignores Pepe, Pepe attacks him only to lose. Manolo, the innocent younger son who is twenty, posing as chico, gets a job with a café carrying goods from one place to another. En route he is sidetracked by a puppet show and is robbed. He loses his job and is a disgrace. He leaves his aunts apartment. He hungry and lines up for food in a soup kitchen line run by the military behind a symbolic iron fence. However, a gang of boys steel the shirt he just washed, he chases after them, and now last in line finds there is no more food. He is ultimately befriended by the puppeteer and his attractive blond daughter. There he makes money. Meanwhile Pili wants more and more material things, wants to be a lady. So Pepe, having lost his job with the Chamberlain, sets out to rob potato sacks on a truck convoy by himself. But evil El Mellao hears of this, wants to hurt Pili, and warns the convoy. Pepe gets shot, returns to find Pili being hauled off as a conquest by El Mellao. Pepe is left for dead in the garage, the Chamberlain enters, Pepe pleads to the Chamberlain to save him, but the Chamberlain puts on gloves, hauls Pepe into the Packard, drives to a bridge, throws him onto the railroad tracks, where he is hit by a train. The film ends with the father picking up the earth from the graveyard and ordering his family back to the farm. The message of the film is that only on the land do you find the religious and male-centered values revered by Franco's Spain.